


Rewriting Fiction

by KarmaHope



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Combines Brotherhood and 2003 elements, F/M, Gen, Realistic take on the 'OC-goes-to-Amestris' trope, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-28
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2018-05-08 18:48:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 64,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5509013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KarmaHope/pseuds/KarmaHope
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, extraordinary things happen to the most ordinary people. But as any alchemist well knows, with those extraordinary things come just as extraordinary sacrifices. Life isn't always about fame and glory - sometimes, it's just about surviving.</p>
<p>(This is a popular fic on FF.Net, and has often been described (by others) as one of the best, most unique 'OC-goes-to-Amestris' fics. I've recently been working on uploading it to Ao3 in chunks.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Monday, May 13 (2013)

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this fic years ago, and it's up on FFN but I only just started using Ao3 as a platform. I'll be backdating chapters until I catch up with where I am on FFN.

****

* * *

  **You are a brick tied to me that’s dragging me down.  
Strike a match and I’ll burn you to the ground.**

* * *

 _The harsh slam of a wooden door_ cracked _through the small room like a gunshot, yet the woman within didn’t so much as flinch as she methodically filed the papers she held in her hand. Continuing her task, she didn’t even look up as the man who had entered cussed loudly._

_‘Dammit!’_

_‘Another false alarm?’ The statement was phrased as a question, but there was no doubt as to what the answer would be._

_‘Yeah,’ the dark-haired man muttered. ‘You’d wonder how stupid people have to_ be _in order to get the idea that something like this would work,’ he continued as he ran his fingers along one of the extra desks that were piled in the room._

_‘This has happened before, remember,’ the blonde reminded her commanding officer. ‘It’s not surprising that others would try it.’_

_‘I know.’ Collapsing into the uncomfortable chair that had been placed behind a desk set away from the others, the newly promoted brigadier general groaned in frustration. ‘Why do they always come to_ me _?’ he complained._

_‘Because you were his commanding officer,’ his captain told him. ‘You know him better than anyone, except for Winry, and we can’t call her to Central every time there’s a case. Besides, she’s a civilian and doesn’t even have the authority to make the call.’_

_Plus we shouldn’t get her hopes up, was the unspoken addendum to that statement._

_‘I shouldn’t even be worrying about the brat,’ the brigadier general continued along his previous train of thought. To anyone else, he would have sounded indifferent or even derogatory. ‘Headquarters is still a wreck, the government is in shambles, the jury is still being debated for the corrupt officers’ trials …’_

_‘It’s only been a week,’ she reminded him gently. ‘There’s still time. They’ll turn up – they always do.’_

_‘Yeah,’ the man snorted, ‘and then they cause me paperwork.’_

_‘Speaking of,’ the captain said abruptly as she dropped a sheaf of unfiled papers on the desk in front of him, ‘arrangements have been made for the trip east. We leave in two weeks.’_

_‘Tell the others,’ he instructed her, ‘I’d like to be gone before the trials start.’_

_Before he was dragged into the quagmire that was the remnants of the old regime … and into filling out more paperwork._

_As the blonde-haired woman left the makeshift office, the black-haired man looked down at the sheaf of papers lying on his desk. A photo of a grumpy teenager was clipped onto the top page, one the brigadier hadn’t seen since the Promised Day. Flipping through the report aimlessly, three words caught his eye. Staring down at it, Roy Mustang smiled to himself._

Missing in Action.

_Missing … not deceased._

* * *

**We are the jack-o-lanterns in July,**  
**setting fire to the sky.**  
**He- here comes this rising tide,**  
**So come on!**

* * *

Like every teenager, Karmyn Dallas abhorred Monday mornings.

On this particular Monday morning – the morning of May 13, 2013 – she was tired, cranky, and unfortunately very much aware of the pain spiking its way through her wrist. Her right hand fumbled with the car keys as she walked, which didn’t help her frustration at her classmates who shouldn’t have passed their driving tests. Due to them, the Somerville High School parking lot could hardly be considered safe – the number of close calls each morning almost outnumbered the number of parking spaces available to juniors.

Thus it was that the sixteen-year-old girl entered the school in a positively dreadful mood. Stalking brusquely to locker number 360, she did her best to ignore those around her. Even on a good day, she had no patience for the cliques and drama that was the quintessence of high school. She kicked the volume on her iPhone up another notch, allowing the sounds of Fall Out Boy’s comeback album to drown out every other noise that tried to assault her ears. She eyed a couple making out against the lockers, rolled her eyes, and scoffed quietly at the display.

On a normal day, she wouldn’t mind the PDA as much. Usually she would have looked forward to kissing her own boyfriend. But now … now it didn’t look like she would be kissing him again anytime soon – not after hearing Elizabeth Carson raving in English class about how good he’d been in bed.

It was the second time in that many months that she’d heard about him cheating on her. Forgive her if she didn’t feel like having it thrown back in her face again so soon.

Music blasted into her ears, the loud rock like honey to her agitated soul. It didn’t even matter that it had been David who had gotten her into Fall Out Boy in the first place. Her music was her escape in the jam-packed mess that was her life.

_Hey, young blood! Doesn’t it feel like our time is running out? I’m gonna change you like a remix,_

“Then I’ll raaiise you like a phoeenix,” the girl known to her friends as Kai sang under her breath as she stood before the door of her locker. It looked the same as it had every morning since freshman year- its battered red face stared back at her, the paint peeling to reveal where it once had been blue. She twirled in the combination for the lock that hung from the latch, albeit a little clumsier than usual, and kicked in the bottom left-hand corner. Her wrist complained loudly as she grabbed onto the top of the door that popped out with her kick in order to pry it open. The stiff door let go with a jolt and a loud rattle, but three years had prepared her for the kickback – she barely noticed it anymore.

The inside of her locker was nothing special. The only interesting thing was that on the door she had a small mirror and a little basket which held her contact lenses and a small bottle of cleaning solution. A pair of magnets held a picture of her and her friend Catherine at the pool in Tufts Park from the previous summer. Kai’s dirty blonde hair was so wet it looked almost brown in that image, while Kathy’s own black hair was plastered against her dark cheek. It wasn’t the best photo of the both of them, but it was one that managed to make her smile every morning.

There was one other picture she kept in her locker. She smiled sadly at the sight, and despite her anger she touched it fondly. It was a couple years old now, having been taken at her freshman Homecoming dance. Kathy had taken the picture of Kai and David on her iPod, claiming the two of them were ‘just too cute.’ It had been hanging in Kai’s locker for years, and yet it was only slightly torn at the edges. It was a reminder of happier times, before things got so strained between the two of them.

“When he wasn’t a lying, cheating _scoundrel_ ,” she muttered bitterly. Pointedly turning away from picture and ignoring the turmoil of emotions swelling inside her at the sight of it, she swung her both her messenger and gym bags off her shoulder so they landed with a thud in front of her. She shoved the gym bag into the bottom of her locker before she undid the clasps to her schoolbag with more force than was necessary; taking a moment to decide what she would need for the day.

 _F_ _day today_ , she reminded herself. That meant she had English and chemistry first, then her criminal law class, gym, and Spanish III. She gathered the things she needed quickly, as it was already nearing 7:20. When she had everything set, she stepped back from her locker. She was about to close it when that picture caught her eye again.

She growled under her breath before forcefully ripping the image from the door. The act sent the magnets holding it flying, though she couldn’t hear the _plink, plink_ of them hitting the floor over the sound of _Young Volcanoes_ in her ears. A hand on her shoulder shocked her into the real world, and she ripped an earbud out as she turned to face her ambusher.

“Whoa, where’s the fire, girl?”

Kai relaxed when she saw her attacker was none other than Catherine. Well, Kathy. Catherine was a name for ‘demure, sweet blonde girls,’ according to her friend, who was almost the exact opposite. At the moment though, the tall dark-haired girl was crouched down on the floor, picking up the magnets that had fallen out into the hall.

When she stood, Kai took the magnets sheepishly and stuck them back to the inside of her locker before finally closing the door. She still held the picture in her right hand, and Kathy’s face fell when she spotted it. There were no secrets between the two.

“You heard, then,” she said, pursing her lips. “Not surprising, given how Elizabeth was going on about it.”

Kai didn’t respond as she shoved the picture into her back pocket. She didn’t want to get rid of it – after all, he was almost four years of her life that she wouldn’t have traded for the world – but she was really in no mood to see his face. She put on a brave front, but of course Kathy could see right through it.

“It really doesn’t matter,” she replied sadly, swinging her locker door closed. “I kind of knew it would happen again.”

Her friend stared at her with dark eyes. “Doesn’t matter? Kai, the bastard _cheated_ on you. _Twice_! How can that not matter?”

Kai shrugged weakly. “He hasn’t said anything to me about it, so I’m really just waiting to see if he will or not. I just … I don’t want to deal with it right now, Kathy.” She shook her head and put her earbuds away as she began walking down the hall. Kathy jogged a couple steps to catch up with her.

“I can take care of the bitch for you,” Kathy offered cockily, a fierce look in her eyes. “And I can call him out on his bullshit, if you’d like. He won’t be cheating with anyone else, once I’m done with him.” Kai didn’t doubt her friend for a second, but she sighed.

“It’s not a big deal, really!” she protested. “I don’t want to be dragged into some stereotypical high school drama – I don’t have time for that! So please, _please_ ,” she begged her friend, “just let it go.”

Catherine, or rather, _K_ atherine Greene couldn’t be more Kai’s opposite: tall and willowy, with a sense of style that Kai only wished she could dare to have. That particular morning Kathy wore a sleeveless black faux leather jacket over a faded band t-shirt that had long ago been made a tank top. Grey skinny jeans and a pair of stylish combat boots completed the outfit. Her nearly black hair, tanned skin and dark eyes – courtesy of her Indian heritage – only added to her striking presence. Her father’s dog tag hung around her neck, as it had for the last four years.

Kai had known Katherine since they were both five, when Kathy had still spelled her name with a ‘C,’ wore pink, and allowed people to call her ‘Kitty.’ They had gone trick-or-treating in themed Halloween costumes together. They had grown up together, and were closer than sisters.

Kathy cast a look at her once more, but eventually sighed. “All right, I’ll trust you on this one. But if anyone tries to stir up trouble …”

“I can be damn well sure you’ll be there for me. I know,” Kai said, looking up at her friend. “Thanks.”

The taller girl shrugged, changing the subject. “So how did your competition go this weekend?”

Kai groaned loudly at the thought of said competition, holding up her left wrist. The black brace spoke for itself. “Terribly,” she said. “I just couldn’t focus. I nearly missed one of the bars and wrenched my wrist in the process. I didn’t even make top ten this time, let alone place. Honestly, I’m more upset about _that_ than the fact David cheated on me again.”

“Your left wrist this time? But that’s …”

The blonde nodded grimly. “Today should be fun. It’s been a while since I’ve injured my dominant hand,” she said, flexing her fingers of her left hand as much as she could. “Hey, Kath. What time is it?”

“Time? Uhh …” she said, checking the chunky black watch she kept on her wrist, “seven twenty-five. Why?”

“Crap!” Kai exclaimed. “I’m late for the Student Council meeting. We have a couple new students today, and the only thing I know about them is that they’re in Beacon House, and that I’m their student liaison. Uhg. Who transfers schools in the middle of _May_?”

“You really need to relax, Kaigirl. You’re putting too much stress on yourself again.”

“I _can’t_!” she protested. “I have Student Council, then I have to show these guys around, I have prom committee after school, I need to get my grade back up to at least a B in pre-calc before my mom sees it, I have to visit the gym today, I have to make up the work I miss … I have a qualifying meet coming up too, so this is a wicked bad time to be injured. Ehrg! I _really_ need to go! Sorry, Kath!”

With that, Kai took off toward the room where the meeting would be held. Katherine watched her go. More than anything, Kathy wanted to find David and give him a piece of her mind, but she restrained herself due to her friend’s request. Fiddling with her dad’s dog tag, she walked to the library where she would pass the time unintentionally terrorizing freshmen until the first bell rang.

* * *

Kai dashed through the halls as quickly as she dared, doing the hallway dance where one weaved through the masses of people that either weren’t looking or just refused to _move_. Her messenger bag bounced around on her shoulder and thwacked against her left thigh as she dodged the masses. It was another minute at least before she wrenched the door open to the English 12 classroom.

She skidded to a halt rather ungracefully, her worn sneakers lacking the traction they’d once provided. She smiled sheepishly at Jessica Remington, the class president, and took her seat as the vice-president of the class of 2014. When the gazes of her fellow officers turned back to Jessica, she relaxed and resettled her glasses further up on the bridge of her nose.

Jessica shot a look at her before turning back to the matters at hand. Kai was handed a paper with the morning’s agenda on it, and she sighed internally. It was much the same as it was every week – budget, fundraisers, the senior trip the next year, and prom. These topics had already been debated and ‘decided’ on so many times, Kai could nearly recite the arguments in her sleep.

However, there _was_ a new item on the list on this particular morning that caught her interest. _New Students_ , it read simply. These were the new students that would be her responsibility for the next day or so as they got settled in. It wasn’t that Kai was looking forward to showing them around – in fact, it was quite the opposite. What if she screwed up? What if they were an absolute pain in the ass? What if they were rude and full of themselves, or, on the other side of things, druggies who couldn’t care less about school? She was a girl who could tolerate only a small margin of people, after all.

Still, she supposed there was an upside to them being her responsibility. For one, if they were friend material, she could perhaps befriend them before they were caught in the clutches of any one of the cliques. It wouldn’t be the first time she had lost a potential friend to the girls who cared more about their clothes and makeup than their grades.

The debates of the Council became background noise as she tried to imagine what the new kids would be like. It was hard – after all, she didn’t even know their names! She had been told practically nothing, not even if they were guys or girls. After only a few minutes, her thoughts wandered to the gymnastics meet the past weekend. As she remembered each and every mistake she had made, including the one that led to the brace on her wrist, her thoughts then started to fall back into the ever-darkening pit in her mind that was David Rowell.

David Rowell, the boy who had asked her out in the middle of eighth grade. Who hadn’t known how little free time she had to herself when he asked her out. Who had stayed with her for almost four years now. David, who had now cheated on her twice in the past two months.

Her morose train of thought was interrupted with the opening of the classroom door. The discussion going on around her ceased as Mrs. Rae – the councilor for SHS’s Beacon House – entered the room. Behind her wide figure trailed two teens Kai had never seen before, and she automatically assumed these were the kids she was supposed to be showing around for the day.

Kai stood and met Mrs. Rae halfway across the room, ignoring the stares of her classmates. Clarissa Rae was a ginger-haired woman of about thirty, and had been Kai’s pillar of support since freshman year. Even when her own mother had told her she was trying to do too much, Mrs. Rae had been there to help facilitate her ambitions. It sort of made sense that Kai would be the one the councilor chose to help the new students.

“Whoa, those two are wicked hot,” she heard Morgan Timbre exclaim in badly hushed tones behind her, “Do you think either of them has a girlfriend?”

“Kai,” Mrs. Rae began as Kai cringed internally with secondhand embarrassment, “behind me, I have Eric and Alan Cirle.” Turning to the new students – guys, Kai noted in answer to her earlier questions – she continued, “Eric, Alan, this is Kai Dallas. She’ll show you around for today. If you have any questions about anything, just ask her.” She smiled brightly, looking back and forth between the three students. “If you need any additional help, you all know where my office is. Okay?”

The three people concerned each gave a nod of acknowledgement. “Thank you, Mrs. Rae,” Kai called to the woman’s retreating back, but got no reply. The councilor for Beacon House was a flighty woman, though she cared much about her students and fought fiercely to accommodate them – she had confronted administration more than once on Kai’s behalf. The door closed once more, and the room was left in silence.

Feeling the stares of the other girls on the Council, Kai’s cheeks burned just the tiniest bit. “Come on,” she told the new boys, “It would be best if we didn’t do this here.”

“Hahah, yeah,” the taller boy laughed nervously.

They left the room, and once they were standing in a fairly quiet portion of the hallway, she turned to them. “Sorry about that,” she apologized, “I figured we didn’t really want them listening – you uhm, probably heard Morgan ... Anyhow, I haven’t properly introduced myself. My name is actually Karmyn Dallas, though most people call me Kai, as you heard, and I’ll show you around for today, as you … also … heard …” she finished lamely as she held out a hand and mentally kicked herself. She never had been as agile with her words as she had been on the uneven bars, unfortunately.

She silently appraised the duo in those few moments, and she could feel them doing the same to her. She couldn’t help but note they were far from unattractive – as Morgan had so elegantly stated – and though she still felt she was cheating on David by appreciating that fact, she told herself she was being silly for even considering him. The two teens were a couple inches apart in height, and they both had hair a few shades darker than her own shade that was more brown than blond, but wasn’t _brown_ brown. The shorter one, who still looked to be a good five or six inches taller than her, wore his thick hair long and tied back in a low ponytail that failed to tame a single – shorter – unruly cowlick, while the taller one had his hair cropped closer to his ears. Both boys had unnaturally blue eyes that unnerved her slightly – was it just her or were they all the _exact_ same color?

Her spine crawled under their gazes as she continued to study the them. Twins? It seemed to be a reasonable explanation for the situation, but still something struck her as not quite right. The clasp of a hand in hers shook her from her thoughts, and she decided she was just being stupid and paranoid and searching for something that wasn’t there … again.

“Karmyn, huh? Cool,” The long-haired brother chuckled slightly as he shook her hand. “I’m Eric, and this is my little brother, Alan.”

“Pleased to meet you, Karmyn,” The other – Alan – chimed in. Kai smiled and shook his hand as well, trying to ignore the part of her brain that was telling her something was off about their eyes.

“Please,” she implored, “call me Kai.” After all, she was only deluding herself, right?

If she had to take a wild guess, she would say they seemed to be of some other nationality. There was something of an accent in the way they lingered over their vowels, at the very least. It wasn’t blaringly obvious, and the lilt in their speech was actually fairly pleasant to listen to. She hoped she’d get to hear more of it.

The first bell rang above them, announcing it was now 7:40 am and time for students to start heading to their classes before the second bell at 7:50. Kai explained this to her charges, and asked to see their schedules. The brothers fished them out of their bags and handed them over.

* * *

“So you see,” Kai told them as they walked through the halls of SHS, “we have a rotating schedule of seven days, labeled with a letter from A to G. Today is an F day, so you have your period one class first, then your period four class. There is a seventeen minute study after the second block, or the second class, of the day. Then you’ll have your fifth, sixth, and seventh period classes. Whether you have first, second, or third lunch depends on what class you have third block. Sometimes you may have first, other times third. Blocks are not always the same as periods.”

As she talked, she cast glances back and forth between the two boys. Both seemed to be paying attention to what she was saying, and for that she was grateful. “Any questions?”

“It seems complicated,” Alan commented.

“Come on, Alan. We’ve figured out much more complicated stuff,” Eric replied lazily, stretching his arms behind him as he surveyed the other students in the halls. “This is nothing.”

Kai smiled to herself, as it seemed that – perhaps – her fears were for naught. In fact, it seemed to be quite the opposite. Even after knowing them for only a couple minutes, she now wished that she would have the next week with them. Her initial suspicions had been cast away as she blamed them on her tendency to search for something unusual about something. Ever since she’d been young, she had always looked for adventure – something straight out of the books she read and the shows and movies she watched – _somewhere_. As she grew up and real life and responsibility took the adventure out of living, the tendency had diminished. It only ever resurfaced now when she met new people, when they were still a mystery and anything was possible.

And right now, these boys were a mystery to her.

She and Eric walked Alan to his class, which was first period modern world with Mrs. Lance. It worked out, as Eric shared his first period English 11 class with Kai. When they reached the door to the classroom, Kai asked the brothers to wait a moment. A few seconds later, she emerged with Katherine trailing behind her.

“Kathy, I’d like to introduce you to Eric and Alan Cirle,” she said, indicating which brother was which. “Eric, Alan, this is Katherine Greene. She’s practically my sister.”

Alan, to her surprise, wasn’t as cowed as people usually were upon meeting Kathy. Eric, on the other hand, wasn’t uneasy at all. In fact, Kai watched as his eye twitched and he clenched and unclenched his left hand a few times before composing himself again. She didn’t think much of it at the time.

“Pleased to meet you, Katherine,” Alan said with a smile, his voice steady. Kai bit back a smile – she could already tell she was going to like this kid. He wasn’t afraid of Kathy, for one thing.

“Come on, Al. Can I call you Al?” Her friend asked. She didn’t wait for an answer before continuing. “All right, Al, ready for the most boring class ever? Thanks, Kai. I’ll take it from here.”

In her no-nonsense manner, Kathy grabbed Alan’s wrist and pulled him into the classroom. Kai actually grinned then. Despite how it may seem to outsiders, Alan was actually in very good hands. No one would bother him if people thought he was friends with the infamous Katherine Greene.

She turned back to Eric only to find him trying to choke back laughter. “Well then,” she said, stretching her arms out in front of her. “Come on, Eric. Your brother will be fine, and we have about three minutes to get to English before the bell.”

“Lead the way.”

* * *

**So come on!  
Put on your war paint …**


	2. Monday, May 13 (2013) pt 2

In all honesty, Edward Elric had not been happy about the decision to go back to school.

He and his brother had avoided the hell that was high school and _actual_ teenagers for nearly twenty years – why they would go back now, with all the new risks, he didn’t know. Going to school was dangerous. Being around the same people for an extended period of time was dangerous. In the ninety-someodd years since they had landed on this side of the Gate, they had usually moved at least twice every decade to avoid suspicion. The number of forged government documents they had created and used was astronomical.

The boys didn’t go to school every year. Even their father had agreed it was too much to ask. The Elrics would go to a few years of school or attend a couple college classes if they so wished, then wouldn’t go to school again for years. It had been a while since they were last in high school, and the brothers had eventually agreed – with prodding from their father – that things had probably changed in the past few decades. If they wanted to keep up with the times – and therefore further avoid suspicion – it would be best to become reacquainted with the population.

So here he was, attending an English 11 class in the year 2013.

He had been placed in an empty seat toward the back of the class, for which he was grateful. Over the years he had found it was easier to doze off and not pay attention if he sat in the back. Edward was studious by his nature – he would spend hours in a library researching one thing or another back in Amestris – but there he had done the researching on things that mattered, and by his own volition. There was a limit on how many times one could be forced to sit through the symbolism of the green light in _The Great Gatsby_ without falling asleep. Doodling lazy transmutation circles on the paper he had been handed, Edward’s thoughts turned back toward the events of his return to hell, aka school.

Kai Dallas was not who he been expecting. When compared to the bubbly, cheerleader class representative he had imagined, Kai was quite the opposite. For one thing, she was _short_. He’d be surprised if she was any taller than five feet. Of course, Edward knew better than anyone not to underestimate small people. Her dirty blonde hair fell straight down to her shoulders, and the pair of glasses she wore had a tendency to slide down her nose. Dressed in a t-shirt that was slightly too large and jeans torn with wear, it was easy to tell she preferred function to fashion.

She was, in all reality, quite unremarkable. However, years of combat had trained Ed to recognize other things. The way she held her weight and the brace on her wrist told him she was probably stronger than she looked. She probably did some kind of sport, but even that wasn’t unusual – a lot of girls did sports.

The best part of that morning had been seeing Kai and her friend standing together. There was nearly a foot’s height difference between the two, and they looked about as different as night and day. Of course, there was the fact that Catherine was _taller_ than him … his height still bothered him a little bit, even after a growth spurt and ninety years. Luckily, she was about an inch taller than Al as well, so there was that blessing at least. His brother wouldn’t be able to tease him without making fun of himself as well.

Abandoning the useless transmutation circles, Edward lazily traced the letters etched into the desk’s surface with his finger. _D-R-E-W_. Honestly, some people were just stupid. Of all things to deface public property with, why would someone put their name? Were they asking to be caught?

“Mr. Cirle? Perhaps you know the answer?”

Edward’s, or rather, _Eric’s_ attention snapped up to the teacher in the front of the room. She stood there patiently with the look on her face that teachers got when they _knew_ the kid they’d called on hadn’t been paying attention. Ed sighed. He was here now – he would have to play the game. _Take that_ , he thought as he rattled off the correct answer to the surprised teacher. He’d played harder games before.

He leaned back in his seat only to find Kai looking back at him from her seat a row in front and to the right. When he looked at her, she immediately turned forward. Edward snorted softly, crossed his arms, and slouched back further in the uncomfortable plastic chair. This was going to be a long couple years, he thought as his attentions turned to the trees outside the window.

* * *

He had caught her watching. He caught her _watching._ Oh, God, what was he thinking? He probably thought she had some creepy crush on him now, which was – of course – in no way the truth. Kai’s cheeks burned as she berated herself for her foolish actions. She had only been curious … wasn’t it reasonable, given the circumstances?

She knew practically nothing about Eric. Kai knew she shouldn’t be so impatient – after all, she had only known him for a maybe an hour. However, because she knew nothing about him, she could pretend he came from MI-6 and was going undercover as a student in order to catch another notorious spy, and …

… and maybe she was just trying to ignore the pitying looks Elizabeth Carson and her friends kept shooting in her direction.

That could be it.

She tore her concentration away from Eric and directed it towards the lined paper resting before her, as blank as it had been when it was passed out. She sighed, clumsily picking her pencil up with her right hand. She shifted her grip on it several times before she finally grabbed it in a way she felt would give her at least some modicum of control. Even then, it still felt wrong. She hated writing righty. The speed at which she formed her sentences – or rather, lack thereof – frustrated her greatly.

The bell rang at 8:59. Looking at what she had written, Kai shrugged. It would be good enough. Her English grade was high enough that it could suffer a few points – it was far more important that she handed the paper in, as she wouldn’t have the time to finish it that afternoon. Following the general flow of students into the hallway, she paused at the door to wait for Eric as he exchanged some words with Mrs. Fritz.

“They give more homework than I remember,” the teen grumbled as he came up next to her.

This threw her for a loop. “Well, it’s a new school,” she finally responded, unsure of what he meant by ‘than I remember.’ “And besides, you’re new. She’s probably trying to get you caught up.”

Eric looked down at her, an inscrutable expression on his face. “Yeah,” he said. “That must be it.”

Kai shook off the unsettled feeling she was getting. Seriously, she didn’t understand her dumb fascination with the new kid. He was just going to turn out like everyone else.

“Come on,” she said, “we’ve got chemistry next.”

Kai hated chemistry. It was a simple fact, but a fact that neither of her parents had ever really accepted. That wasn’t to say that she wasn’t good at it – no, not at all. She held an A-minus, a near-impossible feat in an AP Chemistry class. Both her mother and father were chemists, and so she had grown up with residual, subconscious knowledge of the science that her parents were both so fond of.

As she drew closer to the time in which she should be thinking about college, however, she was beginning to feel the expectations that her parents had placed upon her. It was obvious they wanted her to go into the sciences, like they had. She had taken AP Chem as an elective this year in order to appease them, but with all the pressure and the importance her parents placed on the sciences, it was almost natural that Kai grew to resent them. The sciences, that is, not her parents.

She just wasn’t interested in the sciences, she knew that much. In all actuality, though, she had no clue _what_ she wanted to do. She sort of liked the idea of going into law, but she still wasn’t sure about it. Unfortunately, law school would be expensive, and her parents had already shelled out a ton of money for her gymnastics. She would need a scholarship for whatever college it was that she would eventually attend. She was hoping to make Top Ten her senior year and get an academic scholarship, as well as perhaps a scholarship for gymnastics …

“Uh… Kai?”

There was so much to do, and she was quickly running out of time. She was almost done with her junior year, and things were getting more hectic than ever. She needed to make a final decision as far as what she wanted to do as far as higher education. She had a couple competitions coming up, along with a championship out in California that summer. She had volunteer work to do, and her grades were falling in pre-calculus – she had to get those back up because if she didn’t her mother wouldn’t let her do gymnastics until she did, and it would also significantly hurt her chances of Top Ten. There was also student council and prom committee – oh, God was that next weekend?

Her heartbeat raced and her breathing shallowed as she tried not to let her thoughts run away with her. She stopped walking to brace a hand against the hallway wall. Closing her eyes, she forced herself to breathe deeply and evenly. She _would_ get through this. She would. She had another year and a half, including the summer. There was no use in panicking, especially not in the middle of the hall.

“Kai?”

Opening her eyes again, Kai turned to see the slightly freaked boy behind her. Eric stood there poised to run for help, his eyes slightly wide and a concerned expression on his face. She smiled weakly – so he wasn’t as devil-may-care as he seemed to be. She removed her hand from the wall to stand on her own two feet again, taking one last deep breath and adjusting her schoolbag on her shoulder.

“I’m fine,” she reassured him with a calm she didn’t feel. “Don’t worry about it.” When the dubious look remained on his face, she sighed. “Come on, the chemistry classroom is right up here.”

She continued to steady her breathing as they walked down the corridor. When they turned the corner, they were met with the sight of Katherine and Alan standing outside the doors to the science lab. As they got closer, Kai began to make out their conversation.

“Seriously, I’m fine! You don’t need to stand here with me as if I were a child,” Alan was complaining. Katherine stood beside him, slouched on one hip and examining her bright red nails as if they were the most interesting thing in the world. Her head was turned away from him, so Alan couldn’t see the smile playing at her lips. Kai, however, could.

“I told Kai I would take care of you,” she stated loftily, “and I keep my word.”

When Alan heaved a sigh of exasperation, Kai decided it was time to intervene. She loved Kathy dearly, but her tendency to purposefully push people’s buttons – while most of the time fun to watch – was not helping the situation. If the Cirles complained, it was Kai that would end up in trouble, and that was the last thing she needed.

“Kathy, leave him alone,” she ordered lightheartedly as she approached. Aside, to Alan, she rolled her eyes and added a “seriously!” in a mock-exasperated tone.

“Hey! I saw that!” Katherine exclaimed indignantly.

“I know,” Kai replied coolly, turning back to look up at her friend. “Now scoot. You’re going to be late for class.”

“It’s only gym,” the taller girl protested halfheartedly, but began walking all the same. Over her shoulder, she sang out, “Have fun in chem!”

Kai snorted. Kathy knew just how much she despised the class, and never failed to tease her about it. Turning to the new kids, she smiled.

“After you,” she said, gesturing for the brothers to enter the classroom.

* * *

Chemistry that day was boring, but that was to be expected. Even in the AP class, most of the class was spent going over simple concepts and ideas for the people who just didn’t understand them. For people like Kai, who had understood them the first time they were explained, the extra rehashing was just tedious. At least the labs they did were interesting enough, if only because it got them out of the classroom and into the lab.

It was only second period, too, so she didn’t even have homework to do. Mrs. Fritz had assigned the last few chapters of _The Great Gatsby_ , but Kai had finished the book the day before in a rare spot of free time. Deprived of other means of distraction, her gaze wandered the room.

Dr. Mason was a short blonde man in about his late forties. He was one of those teachers that felt that everyone needed to progress at the same pace, and everyone needed to understand every concept before he moved on. He was actually a really nice guy; Kai just didn’t agree with his teaching methods. His back was currently turned on the room as he scrawled a diagram of the concept he was currently trying to teach. Thomas Mason was actually an old colleague of her mother’s, so Kai had known the man for what seemed like forever.

That didn’t change how bored she was.

Her attention drifted toward the posters that were hung around the room. Atoms grinned down at her with punny slogans splashed beneath them. Several inspiring chemistry-related quotes were written upon the walls. Across the back of the room was Dr. Mason’s collection of science puns, comics, and jokes. Just a little further over, next to the door that was the entrance to the lab, was the poster with a graph of both a man and the Earth, and the proportion of elements that made up each.

_Oxygen- 65%_  
_Carbon- 18%_  
_Hydrogen- 10%_  
_Nitrogen- 3%_

The poster brought back memories from her last year of middle school, back when she had the time to memorize useless facts from books and TV shows. She had forgotten most of those by now, replaced by information such as the date Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated (June 28, 1914) and how to solve x2 \+ 7x + 12 (x = -3, -4). She tried to recall some of them now and then, especially the one from Fullmetal Alchemist whenever the composition of the human body came up, but she could only ever remember the first part.

_Water- 35 litres_

In her languid scan of the room, she realized that she wasn’t the only one not paying attention. At the table in front of her, she watched Alan point out the poster she had just been contemplating to his brother. Eric looked at it, said something to his brother, and then turned back forward while shaking his head slightly. Oh, how Kai wished she could’ve heard what he had said!

Actually, the two brothers talked throughout the entire class, just narrowly escaping reprimand from the teacher on multiple occasions. At first Kai thought they were ignoring the worksheet that had been handed out, but later realized they had both completed it in one of the times she had looked away in a failing attempt to not be a complete stalker.

The bell rang not a second too soon. At the tone, everyone immediately stood and moved around, but nobody headed toward the door. Eric and Alan turned and looked at Kai questioningly.

“I told you about the study this morning, right?” she asked, pretty sure she had. “There’s a seventeen minute study before third period each day. We stay in the second period classroom, but we don’t have assigned seats or anything.”

“Why seventeen minutes? That seems kinda weird,” Eric commented, spinning his chair around to face where she still sat. Kai shrugged, secretly thrilled when Alan followed his brother’s lead. Perhaps she could actually make friends with these people?

“I don’t know,” she said. “All I know is that we have a study between 10:09 and 10:26 every morning, and it is very much appreciated.”

It wasn’t rare for Kai to be doing another class’ classwork during this time, or homework she hadn’t gotten to, or, on some Mondays, taking a desperate nap after getting back late from a competition the day before. Other times, she’d try to get stuff done for student council or prom committee. Sometimes – rarely – she’d read or doodle.

Today would be different, however.

She deftly – or as deftly as one can with a braced wrist – gathered up her binder and papers and slid them back into her bag. When she finished, she stretched both her arms across the tabletop and leaned toward the two boys sitting across the way.

An awkward silence hung about the three of them, as no one knew where to start. Kai had a bunch of questions- where did you live before this? How are you liking the school? Tell me your entire life story. Okay, maybe not the last one. That was a bit too invasive, and of course they would just be regular people. That’s all people ever were – regular.

“What happened to your wrist?” Alan finally asked.

Kai looked at him. His eyes, like his brother’s, were an unnatural shade of blue. She wasn’t going to lie – it was a little weird and unnerving. He was taller than his brother too … odd. She’d thought maybe they were identical twins, but weren’t identical twins usually the same height? But fraternal twins didn’t usually look so darned freaking alike. Of course, she wasn’t an expert on twins, so …

“Oh, this,” she said after a moment’s pause. “I do gymnastics. I had a competition this weekend and grabbed the bar wrong … it should be better in a couple days.”

“Ah. Gymnastics,” Eric said, nodding to himself. “That makes sense.”

Kai looked at him oddly. She, of course, had not been privy to his earlier thoughts in the English classroom.

“That’s cool!” Alan said with a wide grin on his face, which immediately morphed to a mildly panicked expression. “I mean, it’s not cool that you hurt your wrist, but-”

She couldn’t help it. She laughed. “It’s fine. I understand what you’re saying.”

“Are you any good?” Kai turned to Eric, who had spoken.

“Well, I don’t know,” she replied. “I don’t really think so, but I am at level nine, and my coach tells me I am, so … maybe? I do hit my Tkatchevs without killing myself most of the time, which I guess is a good thing …”

Eric chuckled. Kai didn’t really understand what was so funny, but she couldn’t help but smile. When she looked over, she saw that Alan was watching the two of them, amused. A hand on her shoulder caused her to jump, and she whirled around to see who was standing behind her.

“Hey, Kai, were you planning on introducing us at some point?

Kai looked up at the figure standing by her shoulder. When she saw who it was, her smile fell. She wouldn’t call Heather Burns a friend of hers, but they went to the same gymnastics gym … which apparently meant they were besties and Heather should be included in all that Kai did.

“Oh, uhm … yeah. Heather, this is Eric and Alan,” she said, motioning to each one as she said their name, “Eric, Alan, this is Heather.”

They both said hello, and Heather looked at them. “Are you twins?” she asked.

Oh, good. As much as she wished Heather would leave her alone, that was one less question Kai would have to ask. To her shock, both brothers shook their head.

“Al’s a year younger than me,” Eric stated quite proudly, motioning at his brother with a thumb. That surprised her even further – Kai would have guessed it the other way around. “He’s sixteen,” he continued, “I’m seventeen. We started school at the same time, though, so we’re in the same grade.”

Alan started school early? That was impressive … she didn’t question it much. After all, all schools did things a little differently. The likelihood of some school somewhere letting him start a year early was probably quite high. He seemed to be well adjusted, too.

“That’s awesome!” Heather squealed. She was the type to get overexcited about everything, and her high-pitched voice naturally lent itself to squealing.

“Oh! Let me see your schedules again,” Kai said suddenly, turning back to the Cirles. She hoped the other girl would take the hint. “I think this is where we part ways for now.”

“I’ll see you later, Kai?” Heather asked, and Kai nodded dismissively before turning her attention fully onto the brothers.

Indeed, this was where they would split. She herself should be heading to her Criminal Law class, while Alan had physics and Eric would be going to engineering. “The engineering and physics classrooms are in the same wing,” she told them, “so you can walk together most of the way. Oh, and Eric, Kathy has engineering period five as well, so you’ll be in the same class.”

Eric groaned slightly and muttered something like ‘freaking giant,’ but she couldn’t be sure. He could’ve said ‘reeking lion’ for all she was certain. The first seemed more plausible, but …

“Really, she’s a fantastic person,” Kai protested. “She just has a very strong personality. She’s only testing the both of you …”

But before she could say anything else, the bell rang and the class filed out. Once she was outside, Kai paused to make sure the brothers were going the right way before heading in the direction of her locker instead of toward her criminal law classroom. It was time to blow this popsicle stand, at least for the next two hours.


	3. Monday, May 13 (2013) pt 3

Kai ducked nimbly through the hall, avoiding the bodies that were moving in the opposite direction. The bell rang overhead, but she paid it no heed. She continued walking as classroom doors closed around her It didn’t take long to get to her locker, especially with the halls devoid of all teenagers but the ones that were skipping class. Standing before the shabby blue-and-red door, she entered her combination – 7-47-13 – and kicked it again in order to pry it open once more.

The picture of her and Kathy greeted her, along with the empty magnets that reminded her of the picture still in her back pocket. Never mind about that now, Kai told herself moodily as she hung her schoolbag over one of the hooks inside the metal box. She then pulled the gym bag out and slung it over her shoulder in its place. She checked herself in the mirror quickly and grimaced at the sight of the two red spots on her chin and the one on her forehead. She sighed, and then grabbed her contacts and cleaning solution from the basket inside the door. She closed the locker with her knee, fumbling single-handedly with the lock until it clicked shut. Shaking wayward strands of hair from her face, she walked down to the front lobby to sign out.

The office ladies greeted her with smiles and several greetings. She smiled back but didn’t reply as she approached the sign-out sheet and clumsily wrote ‘ _Karmyn Dallas – Junior – 10:35 am – Gymnastics_ ’ in the correct columns. She didn’t usually sign out until 11:00ish, but on days where she had first lunch and wouldn’t actually be going to her third period class until 11:04, she took advantage of the extra time and left early to drive the fourteen minutes to the Gymnastics Academy of Boston. It gave her a little extra free time in the middle of the school day, as she didn’t actually need to be at the gym until 11:20.

Up until this year, she hadn’t been allowed to leave before the allotted time of eleven o’clock. Junior privileges meant she could sign out during her lunch period, which she often took advantage of.

She smiled at the office ladies once more before she left the building. As she fished for the set of keys she kept in her gym bag, she didn’t see the bench that sat right outside the main doors. There was no physical damage done as she walked straight into it, but a quick check for people confirmed the fact it _had_ been a slightly embarrassing mistake. Grabbing her keys out of the bag, she backed away from the bench and walked the rest of the way to the school’s parking lot.

Her mildly battered red pickup truck was slightly Twilight-esque, but its saving grace was the fact it had been polished until it shone. As always, the black flamel window sticker that clung to the corner of her back windshield made her smile. It was the same one that had hung on her bedroom window in eighth grade, but after receiving the truck from her father for her sixteenth birthday, she had relocated it. The color of the truck had been the inspiring factor of the relocation, more for sentimental reasons than any fangirl ones. It had been years now since she had really been into anime and manga.

Tossing her gym bag into the bed, she walked up to the driver’s side and unlocked the doors before she climbed in. When she started the ignition, her stereo picked up from where it had been when she’d turned it off earlier that morning – halfway through Imagine Dragons’ _Tiptoe_.

She’d had Imagine Dragons in for a while now, she thought as she pulled out of the parking lot. It was probably about time to switch it out. Perhaps Panic! at the Disco would be next … or maybe My Chemical Romance. She’d make a decision later, staring at the pile of albums she kept in her room at home. She was one of those people who preferred having a solid copy of the album rather than just getting her music off iTunes. For one thing, the truck was too old to have a slot for an iPod connector cable.

“I get a little bit bigger, but then – I’ll admit – I’m just the same as I wa-as,” she sang along as she drove down School Street, “Now don’t you understaaaand that I’m never changing who I am?”

Despite her general willingness to follow rules, Kai had a habit of driving faster than the posted speed limit. It was in this drive every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday that she found her solace. Fifteen minutes where it was only her, her music, and the roads of the Boston/Cambridge suburbs. Fifteen minutes where she didn’t have to worry about math or chemistry or school at all.

She was nearly at the Gymnastics Academy when she pulled over on Concord Avenue. The time was about 10:50, and she didn’t need to be at the gym until 11:20 if she wanted to give herself enough time to change into her leotard and get her contacts in for 11:30 open gym. She had it down to a science – on days where she skipped out before first lunch, she had enough time to stop by Black’s Nook.

Black’s Nook was a pond she had discovered the year before during a day out with Kathy. There were several hiking trails in the area, and on days where she had enough time, she brought a sandwich and ate looking over the water. Parking her truck with practiced ease, she grabbed her food out of the bag on the passenger seat where she had left it that morning. As soon as her truck was locked, she took off down the trail.

Kai often sprinted down the trail as fast as she could, figuring it had two purposes: one, it got her to her favorite eating spot faster, therefore she would have more time to relax; and two, it sort of warmed her up for the exercise she would be doing later. Okay … it was more the former than the latter. She usually ate where the trail came up right next to the water, on a rock that seemed perfect for doing just that. She didn’t really worry about other people finding her – there weren’t that many people hiking at eleven o’clock on a weekday, and even if there were, she was out of school with permission.

She ate her chicken salad sandwich quickly, rushing so that she could spend the rest of the fifteen minutes she had just pretending she was the only person left on Earth. It was a self-directed therapy that had helped immensely since she had begun. She had Googled panic attacks and anxiety disorders, and while she didn’t think she truly suffered from either – her occasional symptoms weren’t nearly as bad as what those websites described, and she didn’t want to go claiming she had either when there were people who really suffered them badly – she definitely had enough stress in her life to warrant some stolen relaxation time.

Balling the leftover plastic wrap in her fist, she held it tight as she sat back on the rock and enjoyed the cool May morning breeze. Out on the pond a few ducks paddled around as other birds flew overhead. Kai breathed deeply, wishing – as she always did – that she could skip gymnastics practice that morning. She had a sprained wrist … she could easily pass it off as worse than it actually was …

But she knew, as she always knew, that she would never actually do it. There was still enough she could do without hurting her wrist. It wasn’t broken, so it wouldn’t hinder her too much. She could do flips that didn’t require her hands, and she could go over the bits of her floor routine that weren’t too strenuous.

And she loved gymnastics. She loved the exhilaration she felt as the room flashed by her eyes she when flipped and flew. The adrenaline rush she got when she knew she had to land exactly _this_ way or else she’d end up with serious injury was absolutely thrilling. She’d started the sport when she was seven after watching the gymnasts in the 2004 Olympics with her mother. Almost ten years later, and she was two levels beneath that Olympic level. Of course, there was a _huge_ difference in skill between a level nine and an Elite level, despite the deceptive two-level gap.

She liked to pretend, though.

Of course, the ‘pretending’ had gotten her in trouble before. From the age of six until the age of eleven, Kim Possible had been her idol. Even now, at the age of sixteen-almost-seventeen, her text- and ringtones were the Kimmunicator beep. It would have been unnatural if she _hadn’t_ tried to copy the teen superhero when she was nine. Her only reward for that stunt had been a broken ankle and a firm reminder from her mother that the hairdryer she had broken was neither a grappling gun nor a plaything.

Yet, she hadn’t learned her lesson from that incident. When she was thirteen, she’d begun reading that manga – _Fullmetal Alchemist_ – and, like any fangirl, she had developed a raging crush on the protagonist. It was _so_ impressive what he could do, and just how ‘ninja’ he was, and couldn’t she do something like that as well? Reminder: she was thirteen at the time. The attempt had earned her several severe bruises on her back and forearms – not to mention a slightly sprained knee – but thankfully it had been early spring so she could get away with wearing long sleeves and pants until her bruises had faded enough to escape notice from the Momster. As for her knee, she’d said she’d hurt it in her actual gymnastics class, and had somehow gotten away with the lie.

But she wasn’t thinking about any of this as she sat at Black’s Nook. No, her thoughts were occupied with the same topic that had been circling around all day. Eric and Alan Cirle. She didn’t even know why she couldn’t stop thinking about them. She was only thinking the same things about them over and over again. She didn’t even know them!

She wanted to, though.

Like _that_ would ever happen, she reminded herself bitterly. For a girl who was in so many leadership positions, she hated talking with people. Adults she was fine with … other teenagers sucked. There was a reason she didn’t have a large group of really close friends … well, it was one of the reasons. There was also a reason why she hadn’t been able to make enough time for her own boyfriend …

Upon that thought, she extracted the picture from her back pocket. It had gotten a little crumpled from her sitting on it, and so she smoothed it out over her thigh. From the photo, a boy who was unmistakably David smiled mischievously out from under a dusting of freckles as his brown eyes practically twinkled. His short dark hair was spiked up in the front with gel, a look on him that had been rare at the time but had grown more common over the years. A younger Kai looked up from the photo as well; her hair pinned back in a clip. The top of her head only barely reached his shoulder, a fact that was still true two and a half years later. A small smile crept onto Kai’s face as she remembered she had worn two inch heels that night in an attempt to make it less awkward. Her feet had killed her for it.

He had been _so_ cute. And _so_ much fun. That was, of course, before he had become ‘cool’ and a little bit distanced. That was before the physical aspect of their relationship. That was before she got the feeling _he_ believed _she_ didn’t actually love him because she was always busy with this, that, or the other thing and never had enough time to really spend with him. That wasn’t true – sure, she had sometimes turned him down even on days she’d had free due to the fact that she really, _really_ wanted a day to herself for once – but she’d always loved him.

And it _hurt_. It hurt like _fuck_ when she had first heard of him cheating in April with Ashley Anderson. But, like the foolish girl she was, she had given him another chance. She loved him, after all. Even now, after hearing Elizabeth Carson in English on Friday, she still loved him.

No, she told herself as she sat there staring at the picture, she didn’t love _him_. She loved _who he used to be_. They were no longer the same person. The old David would never have been caught dead with either cigarettes or alcohol, and Kai knew for a fact he had tried both of them at least once since the beginning of their sophomore year. She had put an end to the cigarettes quickly by saying she wouldn’t date a smoker, thank God. But … she never saw him anymore. How would she know if he had gone back on his promise or not?

The old David loved _her_ , and would never cheat on her … and practically everyone knew how that had worked out.

Even with her forced epiphany, it still hurt. Kai had the feeling that it would continue to hurt for a long, long time. With the new distinction however, she felt as if she could move on. She would tell him that it was over, and she would walk away a stronger person. She refused to be the girl that fell to pieces after a breakup. He wasn’t her entire world. Not anymore.

She still had her Ziplock bag and plastic wrap from her sandwich in one hand. In a moment of inspiration, she slid the picture into the plastic bag and sealed it tight. She stood, and turned to face the rock she had been sitting on. Slowly, she circled the stone until she found a gap at the base. Taking a breath, she knelt and slid the picture underneath until one couldn’t even see the plastic bag from the outside. She didn’t need it – she had the photo saved on her computer. It’s symbolic, she told herself as she stood.

Jogging back to her truck, her mind remained on the picture left underneath her rock. Maybe some adventurous soul would find it someday. Perhaps the bag would open and it would be destroyed by the elements. Or it could be eaten by some wild animal. In any case, it wasn’t her problem anymore.

Aw, shit. She was running late.

* * *

**And now it’s time to build from the bottom of the pit right to the top.**

**Don’t look back.**

* * *

Gymnastics went better than Kai thought it would. It usually did, once she got started. She’d practiced her floor routine for the entire hour and a half, concentrating on getting the dance parts down pat. She worked to what she believed to be Romanian folk music. She didn’t actually know – the website her instructor had gotten it from wasn’t all that clear with the naming of its tracks.

She couldn’t wait until she could take the brace off in a few days. The uneven bars were her favorite, and that was the one event she absolutely could not do with an injured wrist. Vault was hard too, but that was Kai’s least favorite event. It was always over too quickly.

Speaking of ‘always over too quickly,’ that was how Kai felt when it was time to return to school after practice days. She changed back into her street clothes reluctantly, repacking her leotard in her gym bag. She decided against taking her contacts out– it wouldn’t hurt to go back to school with them in. With her wrist in the brace, it would take longer to get them out and she just didn’t have that time. She had to be back at the school before seventh period began at 1:24, and it took fifteen minutes to get there. Her hair remained up in its high ponytail for the same reason.

The drive back to the school was never as relaxing as the drive from it. She gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles, ignoring the temptation to stop at Black’s Nook and spend the rest of the day there. Imagine Dragons continued to play from the stereo, and Kai turned it up.

“I’m breaking in, shaping up, and checking out on the prison bus. This is it – the apocalypse!”

The song was one of her favorites, and she lost herself in the music as she drove the rest of the way back to the school. She parked deftly in the same space she’d left, turned the engine off, and jumped out almost immediately. She was running out of time, and she still had to swing by her locker before her Spanish class. She locked her truck, grabbed her gym bag from the back, slung it over her shoulder, and ran towards the school as best she could.

She was out of breath by the time she reached the front office, and extremely glad her hair was still tied up. She didn’t even look up at the ladies as she scribbled her ‘time in’ on the sheet in an illegible scrawl. Dropping the pen as if it had burned her, she booked it out of the office and dashed down the hall.

Kai fumbled her lock, having to take a second attempt in order to unlock the thing. When the door was finally open, she quickly swapped her two bags. Luckily, her schoolbag wasn’t as bulky as her gym bag was. A quick check in the mirror told her that her appearance was as hopeless as usual, and she gave up after smoothing some of her flyaway hairs back.

“You’d better lower. Your standards. ‘Cause it’s never … gettin’ any better than this,” she muttered under her breath, quoting the Fall Out Boy song before slamming her locker door shut.

The bell rang just as she stepped into her Spanish class, but her foot was over the line so she was technically on time. Señor Martinez cast a disapproving look at her, and she shrugged helplessly.

“I was in the room,” she said.

“Sólo siéntate, Dallas,” he sighed before turning to begin class. Unfortunately, Kai had Spanish III last period on five out of the seven rotation days, so Señor Martinez was the one who usually had to deal with her coming back from practice late. She was grateful for the fact he had never actually given her a tardy, even when she didn’t make it before the bell.

Kai entered the room fully and collapsed behind her desk, swinging her bag off her shoulder so that it landed on the surface of the desk before skidding off and thudding oh-so-gracefully on the floor. She caught it just before it hit, so it didn’t make as loud a noise as it probably should have. She grabbed her books from the bag, placed them on her desk, and got ready to conjugate irregular verbs.

Her Spanish class was one of those classes that were extremely unruly. The mix of students in the room just lent itself to noise. Lots and lots of noise. Students – especially Rebecca Conley – enjoyed trying to get Sr. Martinez off-topic or distract him long enough so that they wouldn’t have to do work. Sr. Martinez continued to threaten assigned seats, but he’d been threatening assigned seats for the entire semester and hadn’t ever carried through with it. It was safe to say that it was an empty threat by this point. Not that Kai really cared- she was one of the few people that actually sat and did their work quietly.

The hour-long class passed and finally, the final bell rang. Her classmates rushed out, but Kai lagged in putting her stuff away. She still had to go talk with Ms. Powers and Mr. Carlson, whose classes she had missed while she was at practice. She knew she would end up with a bunch of work for Criminal Law to do that night, but Mr. Carlson usually excused her for gym if she got the paper signed by her coach. When she missed his class, it was to go do much more strenuous exercise. She just had to check in with him to turn in the paper and where was her goddamn pencil?

A tap on her shoulder brought her whirling around to come face-to-face with Alan Cirle. Or rather, face-to-chest, considering he was at least 5’9” and she was only 4’11”. He held her pencil in his hand, and he shifted awkwardly.

“You, uhm, dropped this.”

Kai looked up at him and smiled, attempting to mask her uneasiness. “Thanks,” she replied, taking the writing implement from his hand. So he was in Spanish III as well? He had been so quiet she hadn’t even noticed him. There was an awkward silence as she finished packing her stuff away. There was literally no one left in the room. Even Sr. Martinez had left upon the bell – probably to go to some meeting.

Why was he still standing there? He had already given her the pencil … It was making her irrationally nervous, and she searched desperately for some topic to fill the silence with.

“Ahh … how was your first day?” She ended up asking even as she scolded herself for it. Really? Out of all the clichéd topics one could pick, she had to use _that_ one? Not to mention she hadn’t even looked at him as she asked. She couldn’t help it. She was terrible around attractive people.

And Alan, much like his brother, definitely fit in that category.

He chuckled a little before answering. “It went really well. The people here seem nice.”

Her former uneasiness assuaged, Kai turned and smiled at him again. Her bag was now completely packed and slung over her shoulder. “That’s good,” she said. “Sorry I couldn’t be more help. It should have been someone else, considering I’m not even _here_ all day, but Mrs. Rae really wanted me to do it …”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alan replied as she trailed off. “If Eric and I couldn’t find our way around a high school after this long …”

“That’s the second time,” she commented to herself as they made their way down the hall.

“Second time for what?”

The second time I’ve heard one of you Cirles say something that sounded a little strange, she wanted to say. The second time I’ve had to think twice about what you were actually saying. The second time I’ve had to swear that I’m just going crazy. Yeah, she thought, that would go over well.

“Nothing,” she said instead. “It’s nothing.”

And it really was.

They walked in silence for another minute or two. Kai was still wondering why he was still walking with her. She hadn’t really even made friends with him that day. Perhaps he was just a friendly person? But then, why did he choose to walk with her and not some other kid from their class?

“Alan, come on!” That was Eric’s voice, Kai realized as her thoughts were drawn away from the circles they’d been spinning. Apparently he had gotten bored waiting for his brother and came to find him. Well, he had succeeded… only to find her as well. He looked between her and Alan, and Kai could feel his gaze on her even from down the hall.

“Whoops! I gotta go,” Alan said hastily, jogging a couple steps toward his brother. “See you tomorrow, Kai!”

“Yeah, tomorrow,” Kai murmured, raising her hand in a half-hearted wave as he joined Eric. She stood dumbly for a moment, watching the two. They seemed to have a short, intense conversation – an argument? – before Eric acknowledged her as well and they both turned the corner.

She couldn’t quite identify the feeling in her stomach – it was something like a mixture of dread, nervousness, and elation. She didn’t know why she felt that way, but she couldn’t help but think – what had she gotten herself into?

* * *

' **Cause after all – this city never sleeps at night.**


	4. Monday, May 13 (2013) pt 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoken Amestrian is written in 'single quotes,' while spoken English is in the usual "double quotes."

‘Brother, it’s not going to _be_ like last time,’ Alphonse protested as he and Edward drove home from school. As there was no one else with them, he lapsed back into the now-foreign nuances of Amestrian. ‘We can’t let her influence everything else we do – we have to move on.’

Edward sighed. He kept his eyes on the road and his hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel. ‘I know, Al,’ he replied, ‘I know, but I just can’t forget about what happened the last time we made friends with a high school girl. You know how badly that ended.’

The last time they had been in high school was back around 1991 or so, when they lived in rural North Japan. Before Hokkaido, the only thing the Elrics had to worry about with their identity was the fact they didn’t age. It had been a problem easily solved by the forging of government documents, hair dye, contacts, and moving every couple years. It was bothersome, but once they were in a new location they usually didn’t have to worry for a few years at least.

It was in 1991 that they had practically signed their own death warrant, though they hadn’t known it at the time.

One could probably have guessed by now that the last friend they had made was a girl by the name of Arakawa Hiromi – penname: Arakawa Hiromu. The three had become best friends, and by the end of their last year of high school, the Elrics had trusted her enough to reveal their true identities – to tell her their story. They wanted at least _one_ person to know … and who better to tell than a farm girl from rural Japan? Who could she tell that would believe her? She loved stories, they knew, so why not?

They didn’t expect that they would see their own faces – albeit stylized – in Japanese magazines and on websites a little over ten years later. The horror they had experienced as they watched their own lives unfold in front of them for a second time was practically unimaginable. They hadn’t been able to bring themselves to hate their old friend – after all, she was doing well for herself, and who doesn’t want their friends doing well? But since then they’d needed to take extra precautions against recognition and had all but fallen off the map.

Until now.

And now they were already running into the problem they’d had before.

‘She seems really nice,’ Al stated, albeit a little weakly. He didn’t look at his brother as he spoke, instead staring out the window as Edward drove. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that they were still deprived of experiencing a normal teenage life, with normal friends.

Ed knew how his brother was feeling. He felt it too. However, Al hadn’t seen Kai get into her truck from the window of the Engineering room. When they walked out into the parking lot after school, Ed’s eyes had been drawn to the battered red pickup due to natural curiosity. There, on the back window, he had seen the flamel. His symbol. Well, not actually _his_ symbol, but there was no doubt in his mind.

If they allowed her to get closer to them, she _would_ recognize them in time. One person knowing the truth – the author of the so-called ‘story’ – could be accepted. But another witness to confirm the story was real? It was a risk they could not take.

‘She – _they –_ would find out,’ Edward finally said, attempting to turn the conversation away from the short blonde they had met. ‘We can’t risk it, especially not now.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ Alphonse agreed, still rather mum, ‘but we’re never …’

‘Never?’ Ed prompted as Al trailed off, but he didn’t have to. He knew what his brother was going to say. _We’re never getting home. We’re never going to be normal. We’re just … never._

It was only a three minute drive home; therefore the resounding silence only lasted a few moments before they pulled into the driveway of their house. Ed parked the car easily, and they both entered the house with little fanfare.

‘Hey, old man. We’re back,’ Ed told their father, tossing the keys carelessly onto the kitchen counter.

Hiromi had taken some creative liberties when she published their story. After fighting Father, Edward hadn’t given up his alchemy to get his brother back. Instead, they had both ended up on this side of the Gate as payment. Van Hohenheim hadn’t died, either – he had willingly followed his boys through, having known what was on the other side.

The Elrics knew she had taken those liberties in an attempt to preserve their anonymity in this world as much as possible. They still communicated sometimes, mostly through occasional emails. She had apologized years ago, and the Elrics had grudgingly accepted it.

With all the truth behind her success, there was a reason she kept her personal life as private as she did.

‘How was school?’ Van Hohenheim asked, looking up from the papers that were spread out on the table in front of him. He had never explained how he had known where his sons had gone, and Ed and Al had given up on trying to ask him almost eighty years ago.

‘It was great,’ Alphonse said. ‘It’s so different from both Germany and Japan!’

‘I don’t know why we have to go back,’ Ed grumbled.

Their father sighed. ‘You can’t sit around doing nothing for the next hundred years. I got a position as the Engineering professor at Harvard, so I figured it was a good opportunity for the both of you to get out of the house as well.’

Ninety years had done much to calm Edward’s animosity toward his father, and it was only due to this that he didn’t snap at Hohenheim for making decisions for him. In fact, ninety years had dulled his temper as well, though that wasn’t to say he didn’t still have one.

‘Yeah, well, we have homework. Oh, and could you take a look at the leg later? There’s something clicking.’

Hohenheim said he would – after all, the only reason he had become an engineer upon their arrival in this world was so that he could fix his son’s leg when it got worn down. Back in the 1920s, and even still today, it would have been impossible to get someone else to fix it without either screwing up or asking questions. It was better to just do repairs at home.

Edward and Alphonse then continued through the house and into the basement. They spent most of their free time down there – it was the place in their new house that they had claimed as their own. It was large enough to spar in; though Edward technically wasn’t allowed to strain his weakened prosthetic.

It was also where they kept the remnants of their overly-long life. Old textbooks and research sat on the bookshelves that lined one side of the finished room. Yellowed papers with notes written in code were still tucked inside of some of them. There had been a time, after all, when they had thought there was some way they could get back to Amestris.

Now, instead of studying alchemical theory, the boys answered simple questions about chemical reactions they already knew inside and out.

Fantastic.

* * *

 “ _KaiKai!!”_

Kai had only a few seconds within stepping through the front door to brace herself before she was hit by a barreling three-year-old. Laughing, she swept the little boy up in her arms. She grunted as she lifted him, smiling.

“I swear – you get heavier every time I lift you! Soon I won’t be able to pick you up anymore!”

The little blond boy giggled. “But KaiKai, I like it when you pick me up!”

“Well then stop growing!” Kai told her little brother, poking him lightly in the chest. The sound of footsteps brought her attention back up, and she smiled at the woman who entered the entrance hall. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Greene. Thanks for taking care of him again today.”

The dark-skinned woman waved her words away. “It’s no problem,” she said in her unique British-Indian accent. “He’s not much trouble … are you, Christopher?”

Kai’s brother shook his head emphatically, throwing his whole body into the motion. “No!” he exclaimed happily.

“Katherine and Neel are both upstairs,” Guara Greene told her. “They’re both doing their homework, so you can’t stay long, but you can go say hello.”

“Thanks,” Kai said to her friend’s mom. “What do you say?” she asked the little boy in her arms. “Do you want to say goodbye to Kathy and Nee?”

Christopher nodded affirmatively, and Kai smiled at the older woman. “We won’t be long,” she promised before walking over to the stairs.

It was harder with a three-year-old in her arms, but she managed to climb the stairs quietly. Her feet then automatically carried her to the door that she knew lead to her best friend’s bedroom. The door was cracked slightly, and Kai could hear the Marina and the Diamonds blasting from inside. She pushed the door open slowly and poked her head into the room.

Katherine was laying stomach-down on her bed, the jacket and combat boots ditched in a black heap on the floor beside. Gollum, the Greenes’ scrawny cat, was curled up comfortably amongst the other piles of laundry, lifting his head only to see who had come in. Kathy had her books out in front of her, and her neon-green-sock-clad feet kicked back and forth as she chewed on the eraser of her pencil. Her phone buzzed beside her, and she checked it only to chuck it back down onto the bed. Apparently, it hadn’t been important.

“Hey, Kath, I’m taking Christopher home now,” Kai called in. Katherine turned, her straight black hair whipping over her shoulder. The eyeliner and the other makeup she wore to school had also been removed, so she looked more like the Kathy Kai had known since childhood than the rebel goddess she went to school with.

“You’re not staying?” Kathy asked with a hopeful pitch to her voice, turning the music down. Kai laughed internally. The girl would do anything to get out of homework.

“Kathy, you know I can’t. Your mom would kill me for keeping you from your homework. And you know better than anyone that I have so much of my own to do.” It wasn’t that she didn’t want to stay. She loved hanging out with her sister, and they hadn’t had much of a chance to do that recently.

“I’ll text you later, then. We still have to have that girl-to-girl time about that bastard that broke your heart. Oh! And prom is this weekend … we’re gonna have to get you re-sorted with that, too.”

“It’s not that big a deal,” Kai protested. “I’m still going – that ticket was expensive! I’ll just go with you instead, and don’t pretend you’re not excited about that.”

“Oh, come on. You always ruin my fun.”

“I love you too, Kath.”

“Bit-ter sweets,” Kathy caught herself, glancing at Christopher. “See you later, bud.”

“Bye-bye,” Christopher waved, grinning. If Kai was a second mother to him, Katherine was definitely the favorite aunt.

Kai backed out of Kathy’s room only to poke her head into Neel’s lair. Neel was thirteen, and he already knew more about computers than she did at almost-seventeen. His room was strewn with various electronic bits and tech magazines, and thus Kai had dubbed it his ‘lair.’ Even she had to admit he was one of those kids that fit easily into the ‘brainy Indian kid’ stereotype.

He’d also had this adorable crush on her since he was about ten and started to notice such things.

“Neel, I’m stealing Christopher back.”

“Nee!”

Neel looked up from where he was doing his homework cross-legged on the floor. He smiled upon seeing her, that sort of nervous smile that people made around the people they liked. Really, it was kind of cute in an adorable sort of way. _She_ knew that _he_ thought that she _didn’t_ know about his crush, but she and Kathy had both known for years. Kathy had given him hell about it before, but Kai had never said anything about it.

“Hey, Kai. All right. Is he coming back tomorrow?”

Kai shook her head. “Mom only has a night class tomorrow, so I’ll be home before she leaves. He’ll be back on Wednesday, though.”

“Alright,” he said, waving his fingers at Christopher, who tried to return the gesture. “Bye, Chris.”

“Bye, Nee!” When Christopher was even younger, he had never pronounced the ‘l’ at the end of Neel’s name. After a while it became habit, and then a nickname.

“Bye, Neel,” Kai repeated after her little brother before turning away and walking back downstairs. When she reached the bottom, she finally put Christopher down to rest her aching arms. Taking his hand instead, she waved and called another ‘thank you’ and a goodbye to Mrs. Greene.

She helped her brother down the front steps, and then they made their way back to their own house, where Kai had parked the truck before going to pick up Christopher. When she was on her own, the walk was only four minutes, but with Christopher it took about eight. The little boy talked on and on about his day and various other things as they walked, and Kai did her best to listen.

“… and then Maggie said I couldn’t see them because I’m a _boy_ and fairies don’t show themselves to boys … KaiKai?”

“Hmn?” Despite her best efforts, her attention had wandered away from her brother as she walked slowly enough that he could keep up, his hand clenched tight around hers. She knew he had been talking about Maggie, the little girl who lived next door to the Greenes and whom Christopher usually played with when he was stuck over there for the day. Past that … no clue.

“Do you see the fairies? You’re a girl.”

Kai looked down into her brother’s large hazel doe-eyes, and she grinned. “I can’t see them now,” she said sorrowfully, “but when I was younger, I was best friends with a fairy.”

“ _Really!?_ ”

She nodded solemnly, and Christopher was awestruck.

“What did she look like?”

“What makes you think it was a girl? There are boy fairies too, but they’re much rarer.”

“Really? Maggie never said that!!”

“Well,” Kai replied with a conspiratorial smile on her face, “I’m older than she is, so doesn’t that mean I know more than she does?”

Christopher just gaped at her. “I can’t wait to tell her!”

The teenager giggled. Little kids were just too precious. She loved her little brother as if he was her own son, and sometimes, it seemed as if she _was_ actually his mother. With their mom at work a lot and their father in California, Kai was often left taking care of the youngest Dallas.

People often commented on the age gap between the two, and most assumed that Christopher was the surprise. In reality, it was Kai who had come unexpectedly at the end of her parents’ senior year of high school, when both her mom and dad – Marie Anderson and Robert Dallas – were only eighteen. Kai had spent most of her first four or five years at her grandparents’ house while her mother worked towards a degree in chemistry at Boston University. Her father, having already committed to a school out in California by the time she was born, wasn’t around much. He came home for the school breaks, and as often as he could outside of that, but that hadn’t been too often.

Her mom and dad had married after both earning their bachelors’ degrees when she was four. Robert stayed out in California to continue his schooling, however, so things didn’t really change much. After Kai started school, though, it was much easier for her mom to juggle both her and college classes. That was when she met Catherine, and after that she would spend time at the Greenes’ house when her mother wasn’t home. Her grandparents, when it was no longer imperative that they stay in Somerville to look after her, moved up to New Hampshire and left the house to their daughter. They still came down to visit often, as it was only an hour’s drive or so.

Really, Kai had been lucky that her grandparents had been so well-off when she was born, enough that they could pay both their daughter’s school fees and half of the expenses for their granddaughter. That and the fact they were fond of Marie’s boyfriend made it much easier for them to be understanding about the incident.

Kai’s parents at least knew what they were going into when they had Christopher. Her dad still lived out in California, working in some high-tech chemistry lab, but they went out to see him every summer and he still came back for Christmas, so it worked out a little better than it had in the past. He still sent money every month, and with the invention of Skype, FaceTime, and other video networking, they saw him multiple times a week.

It wasn’t an ideal situation, but it was theirs. And really? Kai wouldn’t have it any other way. Was that cheesy? It probably was. She knew it was.

“But KaiKai, what do fairies _look_ like?”

Kai was amazed he had remembered she hadn’t answered his question. “Just like a Dallas,” she said, ruffling his blond hair with her free hand, “remembering things and asking the right questions.” Christopher beamed up at her with pride at the praise.

“Well,” she continued, “our house is right up there. Can you wait until we’re home for the answer? Can you wait that long?” He nodded firmly, and she swept him up into her arms once again as they crossed the crosswalk and carried on to their house.

Her truck was still in the driveway where she parked it, with her schoolbag and her gym bag still sitting in the bed. She hadn’t even gone inside before leaving to pick Christopher up. She’d been late anyway, due to the Prom Committee meeting after school. The only reason she hadn’t driven straight to Kathy’s house was because she enjoyed the walk, especially with Christopher at her side.

“Okay, bud. I need to put you down.” She did, and grabbed the bags from the back. When her back was turned, Christopher dashed up to the front door and stood impatiently, waiting for her to follow. She drew the house key from her bag and unlocked the door, allowing the bundle of energy to precede her into the house.

* * *

 “Fairies,” she began when the both of them were situated in the living room “are very elusive.”

“What does e-loos-if mean?”

“It means they’re shy, and don’t show themselves often. Even when they do let humans see them, it’s rare that you’ll see their true form.” As she spoke, she looked over the criminal law work she’d been given after school. Over the last two years, she had become an expert at talking with Christopher and doing her work at the same time.

“But _you_ saw them! You said so! And Maggie said so too!”

“They’re usually seen as colored light. Yellow or purple or blue … sometimes they’re red. Or green. Or pink. Really, they can be any color they want.” Great, this looked like they had just been reviewing Friday’s lesson on homicide, another class she had missed but had made up for over the weekend. This should be fairly easy. She glared down at the brace on her wrist … and removed it. Her wrist was feeling better than it had this morning, and there was _no_ way she was doing all this writing with her right hand.

So she talked fairies with her brother and did her homicide homework for the next hour. Really, she thought on more than one occasion, I’m talking about fairies while reading about murder. What could be a better combination?

After a while, Christopher got tired of watching her work and wandered off to play with his own toys in another room. Kai, as much as she loved her brother, was quite relieved when he did. She could still see him through the doorway, and she asked him to remain within her line of sight. Still, she could actually concentrate on her homework now with the quiet. She didn’t actually have too much that night compared to the amount of work she’d brought home before.

She was nearly done when her mom came home from work at six. From the living room, she heard the telltale click of the front door. Standing up for the first time in hours, she both heard and felt her joints crack as she stretched out. She tossed her pencil down onto the pile of papers, and left to greet her mother.

“ _Momma!_ ” Christopher ran out of the next room over and greeted their mother in the same way he had greeted Kai at the Greene’s house.

“Hey, sweetie,” Marie Dallas said, crouching down to ruffle his hair before drawing him into a hug. Kai watched from the door to the entranceway, unable to keep the smile off her face. A moment later, she stepped forward to take her mom’s briefcase from her and put it in its usual resting spot.

Marie stood to greet her eldest, ruffling her hair as well. In the Dallas family, hair-ruffling was a sign of affection as common as hugs or endearments. Kai couldn’t remember when it had started, it just … had always been. It was just one of those things that made the Dallases the Dallases. However, she suspected it was probably due to the fact her father was at least a foot taller than her mother, and probably always had been. From the stories she had heard from her parents, she saw her teenage father ruffling her teenage mother’s hair as a form of annoyance, then flirtation, then affection.

Marie Susanne Dallas, born Marie Susanne Anderson, was only thirty-five years old. Kai was often struck with how young she seemed sometimes, and how much they looked alike. It was from her mother that Kai had gotten her blue eyes, pin-straight hair and defined cheekbones – not to mention her height. The dirty blonde shade of her hair was her father’s – her mother’s hair was a beautiful auburn color that she envied.

“Have you gotten your homework done yet, Kai?”

Kai sighed. “It’s taking longer because of my hand. I had to take the brace off … I was never going to get it done using the other hand or writing with it on.”

“Kai …”

“I know!” she insisted, cutting her mother off. “I’ll put it on as soon as I’m done, promise.”

“I just worry, Kai.”

Another sigh. Since she had entered high school and started juggling gymnastics and schoolwork and extracurriculars, Marie had gone into mother-hen mode. She was always worried that Kai wasn’t getting enough sleep or was stretching herself too thin or just wasn’t taking care of herself the way she should be. Which Kai understood and appreciated, really, but sometimes it got to be a little overbearing.

“Momma, Momma! What’s for dinner?”

Marie laughed. “Sweetie, I’ve been home for five minutes. Give me ten more, and then I’ll figure it out.”

“Come on, Christopher. Let’s go watch another episode of Zoboomafoo until dinner,” Kai suggested, knowing how to distract him from his hunger. Although there was a thirteen year age gap between them, she was raising him on the same shows she had watched as a child – some of what was on television now was just trash.

“Okay!” the little boy exclaimed happily as he turned away from their mother, who shot Kai a look of relief. The teenager then shepherded her brother into the living room and inserted a disc from the set into the DVD player. She queued up one of the episodes – one that she had seen a billion times but Christopher had only seen once before – and set it playing as she went back to her homework.

Dinner was called half an hour later, and both children were glad. Even Kai had begun to get hungry. Conversation that night went as it usually did, with Christopher coming up with new antics to keep his mother and sister laughing.

All was good and well in the Dallas household, and Kai would remember it later as the calm before the storm. Perhaps – if she had known – she would have lingered longer at the dinner table. As it was, the work and expectations pressed upon her caused her to leave early – as per usual – and retreat up to her bedroom in an attempt to keep up with school.


	5. Tuesday, May 14 (2013)

Kai came home from school the next day in an irritable rage. She muttered angrily at herself under her breath as she stormed into the house, cursing just about anything and everything to Hell. People sucked, and that was that. Every time she deluded herself into thinking otherwise, something came along and disillusioned her again. She stormed upstairs, ignoring everything else around her. She wasn’t even paying attention as she slung her bag into a corner of her room, and the resulting crash of the bookshelf it knocked over caused her to wince. She glanced back at it and a sigh escaped her. She would have to clean it up later, she realized with a sinking feeling.

As it was, she ignored the mess as she headed straight for her bed. She perched on the edge with a huff before allowing herself to flop backward to stare at the ceiling. If she could just lay there for the rest of eternity and never have to deal with the outside world again, then she would be happy. It seemed that everything was falling down on her at once, and she was fed up with it. She didn’t need this crap.

She pulled her phone out of her left pocket and woke it up to a picture of her and her father before she typed her passcode in with one hand. She cursed as she missed a number and it told her she had to try again. After the second try it unlocked to her home screen of a beaming Christopher, and she unconsciously smiled despite her terrible mood. Tapping the green phone app, she called up Kathy’s number and pressed the device to her ear.

“Please tell me you don’t have a lot of homework tonight,” she pleaded as soon as she heard her friend pick up.

“Uhm, I don’t think so …” Kathy replied. “Kai, what’s wrong?”

“I just really need to talk with you about various things,” Kai replied, trying to keep her voice calm and under control as she stared at the ceiling. She really didn’t need to worry her friend even further by barking her ear off or bursting into tears.

“Okayy,” Katherine said slowly, “I’ll text you when I’m done with my homework … are we meeting at the Field?”

“Yeah,” Kai affirmed. ‘The Field’ referred to Nunziato Field, the dog park that was situated on the corner just across from Kai’s house and a little way down the street from Kathy’s. For as long as they had been able to get out of the house on their own, that was where they would meet up and hang out.

“All right. I’ll text you. See ya, sis.”

The line went dead, and Kai plugged the white rectangle into the charger by her bed. She too had homework to do, even though it was a Tuesday and she had been in school all day, but she had zero interest in doing it. Instead, she reluctantly pulled herself up and sat on her bed, making no move toward doing anything productive.

Her room was fairly clean, comparatively. Her clothes were all put away in their mahogany drawers, her desk was organized, and the things that didn’t fit in the closet were arranged neatly around the edges. The dark wood-paneled floor was covered with a forest green area rug. Like many other teenagers, she had posters taped to her pale green walls. Rather than the boy-band posters Kathy had been guilty of in middle school, Kai’s walls boasted The Killers’ _Day & Age_ album art, a My Chemical Romance Killjoys banner, and an old Panic! At The Disco concert poster, as well as images of the 2012 Olympic gymnastics team and the campus of Harvard University.

Against the organization of the rest of the space, the collapsed bookshelf and resulting landslide of books was quite obvious, and Kai knew it would bother her until it was fixed. In addition, it looked like a distraction from her homework. She pushed herself from the bed with a groan and crossed the room until she was staring down at the mess she had made. She sighed. It wasn’t often that she found herself in a temper, but she really needed to learn to stay cognizant of her surroundings when she was mad. Finding her bag underneath the paperbacks and hardcovers, she grabbed the strap and dragged it out from under the mess to leave only the books.

Damn, she thought as she surveyed the damage, it looks like I actually broke one of the shelves. She wasn’t really surprised though – the shelf was one of the cheap ones she had gotten from Target to hold her growing manga collection in eighth grade. She hadn’t touched any of the books on it since freshman year, and so she hadn’t thought to replace it. It looked like she would be doing that sometime soon, now.

“Looks like I don’t even know my own strength,” she joked quietly to herself. “No shelf is safe around the mighty Kai Marie Dallas – their spines all quiver in their books when they see me coming.” She grinned at the pun, and got to work.

Ten minutes later, as many of the books as possible were back on the remaining shelves, but Kai was still left with a number of books that were left without a spot to go. Since there was nothing she could do about it, she stacked the remaining books neatly on top of the short shelf. She glanced down at the last book that was to go on the pile – _Fullmetal Alchemist: Volume 5_ – and was struck by a sudden sense of nostalgia. Manga and anime, especially _Fullmetal Alchemist_ had been her _life_ near the end of middle school, back when she was into that sort of thing and before gymnastics and school took over her life.

Kai reached to put it with the rest of them, but paused and retracted her hand before she put it down. A small voice in her subconscious told her she didn’t have _too_ much homework that night, and she deserved some time to herself. Instead of putting the book back, she found herself taking a couple more from the shelf. If she was going to do this, she told herself, she might as well make it a worthwhile trip down memory lane.

She didn’t mean to get sucked in, but an hour later saw her on her fourth volume. She wasn’t reading them in order – she had numbers five, ten, thirteen, and twenty-three. As she read, her brain began to remember the missing plot in between. She almost felt like she was the girl in middle school again, the one who could fill her brain with fantasies and crushes on fictional characters. She was the girl who dressed as those characters and had the time to go to conventions. She was the girl who was satisfied with life, with a best friend and a fun boyfriend and a sport she enjoyed and hardly a care in the world.

Oh, how she missed that girl.

When her phone finally _beep-beep-be-deep_ ’ed with the text from Katherine, Kai dropped volume twenty-three as if it were a hot potato as she was jerked back into the present. With a sad smile, she got up and stashed the books back on the broken shelf. Perhaps – if she ever found free time again – she would get back to them.

 _Katherine Greene  
_ I just finished, see you at the field?

 _Kai Dallas  
_ Yeah

 After she sent her answering message swiftly, she yanked the device from its charger cable. She slid the phone back into her left pocket, and then walked out of her bedroom and down the stairs.

“Kath and I are meeting at the Field,” she called to her mother before she left. “I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Okay,” Marie responded, “stay safe.”

It’s only across the street, Kai wanted to say, but she knew that it was a Mom Thing to say things like that. She’d tried putting up an argument before, and it hadn’t ever gotten her anywhere. With that in mind, she simply left without responding again. Her mom was used to that.

Katherine was already in their usual meeting spot when Kai got there. The dark-skinned girl had already abandoned her rebel fashionista look. Her long dark hair was up in a messy bun and her thick-rimmed hipster glasses sat upon her makeup-free face. Her miniskirt and off-the-shoulder ripped top of the day were replaced by comfier leggings and a tank top. Her father’s old combat boots were still laced to her feet, but Kai couldn’t blame her – she knew from experience that the things were damn comfortable.

And yet she was still beautiful. Kai knew her own ponytail, t-shirt, and jeans couldn’t even compare. They never did.

Upon seeing her best friend, Kai felt the rage from earlier beginning to reappear. The Elrics had managed to suppress it while she was distracted, but now it was returning full force. She just needed someone to rant to, and Kathy was the perfect person.

Scratch that – she was the _only_ person. If she didn’t have Kathy … she didn’t know what she would do.

“Hey, girl … what’s wrong? You look like something just bit you in the ass.”

Kai sighed and collapsed next to her friend, who was sitting with her back against the largest tree at the edge of the park. She didn’t say anything for a few moments, wrestling to get her emotions back under control. When she felt as if she could speak without bursting into tears, she did.

“It’s David,” she finally said. Determined not to cry, she ended up speaking the words through tightly gritted teeth. “He stopped me after school earlier. Wanted to _talk_ with me, y’know?”

She didn’t look at Katherine as she spoke. She could already imagine the outrage and concern on her friend’s face as the taller half-Indian girl cursed loudly.

“What excuses did he make?” Kathy asked, following the expletive.

“I don’t actually know,” Kai responded bitterly. “I mean, he’s pretty much already spoken for himself. He cheated on me twice … what more is there? I don’t think I actually need to listen to him.”

Her words were tough, but it was only a front and they both knew it.

_“Kai, please. I heard Elizabeth talking … I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out that way.”_

_“Yeah? And how_ did _you want me to find out? Were you_ ever _going to tell me?”_

_“Of course I was. Tex …”_

_“Twice, David._ Twice. _I … I don’t want to talk about this right now.”_

She’d had tears streaming down her face as she pushed out the front doors. She’d run away. Why had she done that? She’d decided just the day before that she didn’t love him anymore. She had been _determined_ to end it, and when the moment came she had lost her nerve and left them in the same limbo they’d been in before. Her vision blurred as she sniffled something horrendous, and she’d known her face was red and splotchy. She had never been an elegant crier.

It had been a few minutes before she had forcefully calmed herself and wiped her tears away enough so that she didn’t get herself killed walking home. She hadn’t taken the truck that morning, as she hadn’t needed to drive to gymnastics in the middle of the day. The last image she’d seen of David was running circles in her head at top speed – the open mouth and the shock in his eyes as she’d shut him down cold.

_What the hell had she done?_

As she walked, she had managed to stifle the sobs until they were just little hiccups. Eventually, the sadness had worn away to anger. How dare he cheat on her twice, and then ask for her forgiveness? How could he say he’d change, _again_ , when they both knew he never would?

He’d never actually said those things, she knew. She hadn’t given him the time. She didn’t _want_ to hear those things. It was almost easier to remain blissfully ignorant.

And David wasn’t the only boy causing her grief. Her rage was also somewhat directed toward the new kids – the Cirle siblings. They had been talking with her yesterday … it almost seemed that at least Alan wanted to be friends. She had shared every single class with at least one of them that day – the day after – and neither of them had spoken a single word to her.

“Well you know what?” Katherine finally said as soon as Kai had spilled her guts, calmed her rage, and cried her eyes out, “I know you’re going to get this figured out. Either David’s gonna shape up, or you’re going to dump his sorry ass, because fuck them. Fuck all of them. I mean, whatever, right? Obviously you’re just too fabulous for them,” she stated matter-of-factly. “And quite frankly, that Eric character is a bit of an ass.”

At this, Kai managed to crack a smile through her red-rimmed eyes and wet face. It was true – Kathy and Eric clashed about as badly as polka dots and plaid. They had argued and snapped at each other all the way through pre-calc, making it nigh-on impossible for her to concentrate on any of her work. The teacher had hardly noticed, and even if he had he wouldn’t have done anything about it. Mr. Lambdas held the reputation of the school drunk, and students swore the liquid in his water bottle didn’t smell like water. Kai, too, could confirm this allegation.

“Oh!” she suddenly exclaimed, wiping the remaining tears away firmly, “You know how Eric has that limp, like? Like one of his legs just doesn’t work properly?”

Katherine looked at her. “Mmn, yeah, I noticed that. I didn’t want to say anything though – I don’t like him much, but I didn’t want to be insensitive, you know?”

“Yeah,” Kai replied in agreement. “Anyhow, he’s in my gym class, along with Alan, and get this – it’s a prosthetic.” At her friend’s curious gaze, she continued, “no, really! He was talking with Mr. Carlson in his office when I went to turn in my activity paper for my absence yesterday! I walked in just as he was dropping his pant leg … it was definitely silver rather than skin-tone.”

“What kind of prosthetic was it? I mean, most are made of some sort of carbon fiber …” Kathy loved engineering, and she certainly knew what she was talking about when it came to it. Kai sometimes found it ironic that her parents had failed to get her interested in science and technology, but her best friend was fascinated by it. “… And they don’t look like actual legs.”

Kai sighed. “I don’t know. I didn’t get a good look at it. I don’t think I was supposed to see in the first place – he got this really odd look on his face when he turned to see me standing there. I wasn’t about to ask, either.”

With a fed-up sigh, Kai turned so that she could lie flat on her back against the ground. The cool late-afternoon spring air just felt so _good_. She loved being outdoors more than anything. It always had a calming effect on her. Being outside meant she wasn’t trapped by her hectic life. Speaking of …

“Shit,” she swore, sitting bolt upright. When Kathy looked over at her in alarm, she said “I still haven’t done any of my homework.

“What have you been _doing_ then, girl? Usually you’re mostly done by now!”

“I … kinda rediscovered my old manga shelf,” Kai admitted sheepishly. “I accidentally started rereading FMA and lost track of time.”

Katherine cast her a knowing look. “You needed that. You can’t be all work and no play, Kaigirl.”

“I know, I know,” Kai said, standing up. “It was nice. But I _really_ need to get my work done – Dad is supposed to be calling tonight, and Mom won’t let me talk unless I have everything to a point where I can finish quickly. So yeah. I’ll see you later!”

* * *

Due to a bit more procrastinating on her part, Kai was only just finishing her pre-calc homework that evening when her computer _bwopped_ with an incoming Skype call. Staring down at the last problem, she put her pencil aside with a sigh and clicked to accept it. Problem twenty-seven could wait an hour or so, she decided.

It took a couple moments to sync both the webcams, but it wasn’t long at all before the girl was looking back at familiar hazel eyes and neatly combed blond hair. She couldn’t help the smile that twitched at the corners of her mouth – she had given up acting the indifferent teenager when her dad called. She had gone through that stage when she was fourteen, and it really just wasn’t worth it.

“Hey, Dad,” She said, closing her pre-calc textbook with an audible _thud_. “How have you been?”

“Hey, Kai. I’ve been alright, thanks. How’s school been? I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t gotten to talk with you much. Sorry ‘bout that,” her father apologized.

Kai shrugged. “It’s been good. I still have a math problem left to do, but it won’t be difficult to finish.”

“No chemistry homework I can help you with tonight? That’s rare.”

Chemistry was what Robert Dallas did for a living, and it was what kept him away from the rest of the family so much. After college he had gotten a job at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory working with the team of scientists on element 116, or Livermorium as it had been named. He had spent years in Russia working at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, and during that time, communication had been limited. Since he arrived back in California almost five years ago, the entire family had been making more of an effort to keep in touch.

In fact, the Dallases were planning on flying out to California that summer to spend a few weeks together. It was a trip that they hadn’t missed in the last four years. Things would be different this year, however – this year Katherine would be flying out with them to spend a couple weeks as well, and Kai was so excited. And afterwards, when Marie and Christopher flew back to Massachusetts with Kathy, Kai would stay in California for a summer internship her father had landed for her at the lab.

“No, no chemistry homework tonight. I got that done yesterday, sorry.”

Kai and her father talked for a while longer about this and that. School, the east coast, Christopher, and what Kai wanted for her birthday were only a couple of the topics that came up. Kai didn’t say anything about David. She was still almost ashamed of her actions earlier that day, and she knew her dad would tell her that she shouldn’t have run away. She knew that, okay? _She knew that_.

It’s just so much harder to actually let go than to tell yourself you will.

“So how’s work?” Kai asked, trying to get the conversation off her. “Have you made your breakthrough discovery yet?”

Robert Dallas sighed and ran his hand back through his hair before taking his glasses off and rubbing his eyes tiredly. When he put them back on, he looked at his daughter.

“I’ll take that as a no,” Kai said wryly, twisting one corner of her mouth into a half-smile.

“No, actually Kai, it’s been going well. _Really_ well. It’s just that I’ve had to fill out a hell of a lot of paperwork lately, and I don’t even know how to fill most of it in.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. It’s … it’s hard to explain without sounding like I’m high off something,” he said, mussing his hair again. “Promise you won’t think I’m crazy?”

“I promise.”

“Well, there was a … mishap … at the lab a couple days ago. Some intern left the door to the testing room open and we ended up with a radiation leak, so we had to evacuate. Dr. Russo didn’t make it out with the rest of us. But when we went back in, there was nothing. She wasn’t there. The Livermorium wasn’t there … they _literally_ vanished. I’m not making this up, I swear,” he added upon seeing Kai’s skeptical face.

“I didn’t say you were,” she replied. “It doesn’t seem to be something you would joke about. But … isn’t it possible that she just stole it?”

“Yeah, well, it seems possible, but we have no proof of anything – the cameras shorted out during the evacuation. The higher-ups didn’t believe me until they saw for themselves. And now I have a bunch of paperwork to fill out. But I don’t know how to fill it out, because I don’t know if it was a death at the workplace, or if it was a theft, and if it was, I don’t know what happened. Really, it shouldn’t even be my job. It should be Dr. Russo’s. But …”

The ‘but’ was easily understood as he trailed off and they both fell silent.

“What did you mean by ‘really well?’”

As it was, despite the missing persons / theft incident, the research had been progressing at an almost breakneck speed. For the first time ever, they had stabilized enough atoms to create an object visible to the naked eye … although it had recently disappeared. Luckily, they had been running two tests at the same time, so it wouldn’t take long for the backup to reach the size of the original piece.

“It’s weird,” Mr. Dallas continued, “We’ve classified it as radioactive, but it doesn’t act like the rest of the radioactive elements. It’s a complete anomaly.”

“Kai?” A new voice asked.

Kai turned away from her father to see her mother standing in the doorway to her bedroom. “Yeah?”

“Can you watch Christopher for a bit? I need to run out to the grocery store … hey, Honey,” she added when she saw her husband over the Skype interface.

“Evenin’, Darling.”

“Uhg,” Kai groaned good-heartedly. “If you’re gonna be cutesy, don’t do it in _my_ room over _my_ computer, alright? I’m gonna go find my baby brother.”

Marie laughed. “All right, Kai,” she said, ruffling her daughter’s hair as the blonde made to exit the room. “I’ll be going in five minutes or so. Just let me say hi to your father.”

“Okaay. Bye, Daddy!”

Problem twenty-seven could wait a little longer.


	6. Monday, June 03 (2013)

The days and weeks passed, as they are apt to do, and then it was the beginning of June. The hype that came along with the last few weeks of school was beginning to ensnare even Kai. Of course, along with the excitement came an influx of work as the teachers tried to cram in the last few units before finals. Even though she was done with prom committee, as prom had come and gone, Kai still found herself overwhelmed with everything she had to get done before school was over.

It was a Monday – June third, to be exact – and Kai was running late getting back from gymnastics once again. She had stayed after for a few extra minutes to finish perfecting one of the moves for the floor routine she would perform at her competition out in California that summer, against her better judgment. Despite breaking the speed limit on her way back to school, she still entered her Spanish class about five minutes later than usual.

When she stepped into the room, she froze. There was someone in her seat. Why was there someone in her seat? Where would she sit now? _What was going on?_

“You’re late,” Señor Martinez said disapprovingly, drawing her attention away from her filled seat.

She had no excuse this time. She handed her pass over with confidence she didn’t feel, and would have gone straight to her seat if it weren’t for the fact she had no clue where she was supposed to sit. Instead, she stood at the front of the room holding her messenger bag as she shifted her weight between feet.

Señor Martinez looked up. “I assigned seats,” he told her. “You are between Mr. Cirle and Ms. Dixon. Take a seat.”

She did so, sliding smoothly into her seat as she swung her bag off her shoulder. Alan looked over at her, and she smiled and rolled her eyes at him. Over the past couple weeks – despite the initial cold shoulder they had given her – she had established a shaky friendship with the Cirle brothers. It revolved mainly around the boys being table partners in chemistry with herself and Heather on lab days. That, along with the fact she shared every class except Criminal Law with at least one of them, had forced them to become what would be best described as friendly acquaintances.

Kai had to admit that the seating assignment had taken the noise of the class down considerably, and she found it much easier to concentrate on the conjugation of irregular verbs than it ever had been. In fact, the entire class was much more enjoyable. Then there was the additional perk that she’d had the fortune to be seated next to the younger of the Cirle brothers, whom she was still hoping to actually become friends with at some point.

Some god somewhere must have been smiling upon her that day, or perhaps, in the long run, it had condemned her to Hell. It was the Spanish project assigned that day which would lead her down the path to the doors of doom.

“Your task is to create a PowerPoint that details a specific aspect of a Spanish-speaking country’s culture, entirely _en espagñol_. You may work with one of the people either beside you or behind you, or you can work alone. You may find your partner now as I hand out the grading rubric,” Señor Martinez announced.

The assignment was met with a general reception of groans and complaints. _I’m not good with technology_ , one girl lamented rather loudly. Kai bit her lip. Now would be her chance, and she scolded herself for being so apprehensive about it. It wasn’t like she was asking him out or confessing her undying love. It made sense – she knew him, they were sort of friends, and she hated Emily Dixon. So therefore …

“Uhm, do you want to work together?” Kai heard the words exit her mouth but wasn’t consciously aware of speaking them. When Alan turned toward her, she immediately pulled herself together. “I mean, I kind of really don’t want to work with Emily, and Rachel is already working with Brian, it looks like … soo … uhh …”

Goodness, she could talk to adults just fine – she could handle official, grown-up conversations easily – and yet she was reduced to a stammering mess when she tried to talk to people her own age. It was no wonder that she only had one best friend, and that she had met said best friend back in preschool. It was miraculous that she had a boyfriend at all.

“I don’t see why not,” Alan told her, gesturing with his hands. “Do you have any ideas?”

Kai thought a moment. “Perhaps we could do Spain, rather than one of the countries in the Americas,” she suggested.

They talked until the bell rang, and Kai found herself walking down the hall beside him after school let out for the day. Neither of them said much, but they were definitely walking together. When Alan stopped at his locker, Kai stopped as well.

“So, how are we going to do this? You do the research, I do the PowerPoint? The other way around? Do we get together and work on the thing together some day?”

Alan paused for a minute, thinking. “Here,” he said, pulling his cell out of his pocket and pressing a few buttons. “Enter yourself in there. I’ll text you later and we can get things figured out.”

Okay … she had not been expecting that. “Alright,” she said, taking it from his hand. She quickly entered _Kai Dallas (857) 555-2213_ into the open contact spot and handed it back to him. As she did, she took the time to observe his locker. She had found in the years she had attended SHS that one could learn a lot about a person by examining what they kept in their lockers. There wasn’t much – he hadn’t even gotten a lock for it. A couple books, the raincoat he had probably worn to school that morning. On the inside of the door, though, there was one picture. It appeared to actually be a photo of an old photograph, one that was slightly worn and torn and printed in sepia.

The girl in the photo looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, with a round face and long blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. She was grinning widely for the camera, looking up from whatever she had been doing. It looked to be something mechanical, as the girl held something that looked like a screwdriver in her hand. She was … oddly familiar to Kai, and yet she had no clue why.

“It’s our … grandmother … when she was young. She gave this photo to us before she died. Brother and I thought it would be best to preserve the original by taking new pictures of it,” Alan explained when he caught Kai looking.

“Ah,” Kai said. “I was wondering. That’s nice,” she said, still kicking herself trying to figure out who the girl looked like – and why she would recognize her. She shook her head. It was nothing. “I’d best be going,” she said, tearing her eyes away from the photograph. “Talk to you later?”

“Yeah,” Alan said. “Bye, Kai.”

Kai only made it a few yards before she stopped cold in her tracks. She clenched her fists tightly, breathing deeply in an attempt to control her rising emotions. _Ten … nine … eight …_

“Kai?” Al called after her, “are you okay?”

 _Five … four … three … two … one_.

She spun on her heel back toward where Al was standing, perplexed. “I’m just fine,” she said, forcing a grin. “I’m just gonna go around the other way, I think. Bye, Alan.”

Of course. It was a new month wasn’t it? New month, new girl. It looked as if the pattern would continue, and Kai didn’t know what the fuck to do about it. She pulled her phone and earbuds out of her bag, placed her music on shuffle, and soon the outside world was drowning in Paramore as she stalked down the hall to her own locker.

_Just talk yourself up and tear yourself down._

Shrugging into her own raincoat, she turned the volume up as high as she could without permanently damaging her eardrums. She ignored everyone and everything on her way out of the school. When she accidentally bumped into someone in the front lobby, she glared up at them before storming out. Only once she was outside the school did she realize she person she had so rudely rammed into was Eric.

Whatever.

_And I put my faith in you – so much faith – and then you just threw it away._

It was almost sickening just how much the stupid song applied to her situation. Kai was grateful when the song finally rolled over into something a little more innocuous. There weren’t going to be any more chances. This was the last straw. She was done with it – the lies, the puppydog eyes … everything.

“You are a brick tied to me that’s da-raggin’ me down. Strike a match and I’ll burn you to-o the ground,” Kai sang along viciously as she drove home in the rain. David was a brick, along with a couple other words that rhymed nicely. On that drive, she felt her resolve harden once more – she wasn’t going to give in again.

_I’m gonna change you like a remix, then I’ll raise you like a phoenix …_

* * *

That afternoon, Kai did not have much inclination to do anything at all. She did what homework was due the next day, but homework that wouldn’t be due for a couple days was ignored completely. Her phone was plugged into her stereo and still on shuffle, so she’d get songs from Imagine Dragons to Green Day and back again. Her mom had knocked on the door more than once, but Kai ignored her each time.

To her utter shame, she had been unable to stop the tears from rolling down her face to make little dots on her bedcovers. She had done so well – she hadn’t cried in years, yet in the past few weeks, her eyes had leaked more saltwater than they ever had before. And it was entirely his fault. It was ironic, really. When she was younger she had told herself that she would never be one of those girls to cry over a _boy_ of all things. She’d thought those girls were helpless and pathetic.

Well, she did feel helpless. And pathetic. So really, her younger self wasn’t entirely wrong.

She breathed deeply as she wiped her eyes with the backs of her hands. Her glasses were folded up on the bed beside her. After all, saltwater was a bitch to get off glasses. Kai knew she looked a mess. Her face was surely red and splotchy, and she probably looked as if she had conjunctivitis in both eyes. What little mascara she had worn that day was now smeary black spots on her face and hands.

“Put on your war paint,” she whispered to herself sardonically.

She pushed herself up onto her elbows and her blurry uncorrected gaze floated around until it landed on the discarded manga at the foot of her bed. With some effort, she lurched forward to grab it. She was met with the cover of _Fullmetal Alchemist: Volume 17_ , the one she had been reading last night before she had gone to sleep. They were just entering Rush Valley, she remembered as she flipped open to where her bookmark had been left.

You know those moments where you realize something, or you think you’ve forgotten something, and your entire body freezes while you get that funny thumping feeling in your head? Yeah, that’s the one.

Kai froze. So _that’s_ where she recognized Alan’s grandmother from. Honestly, the girl in the sepia photograph was nearly the spitting image of Winry Rockbell, right down to the tool in her hand. At least, she would be if Winry Rockbell was a three-dimensional person and not a construction of lines on a page. Staring down at the page in realization, Kai couldn’t help the smile that crept across her face. She loved FMA parallels in real life. Even now they were like fine chocolate to her repressed otaku soul.

Had this been a couple years ago, she may have tried to use this as proof that the Gate _did_ exist, that Amestris _was_ real … but this was now, and she shook the feeling off. Just another parallel, she told herself as she continued reading from where she had left off the night before. It was a wonderful, wonderful distraction from the train wreck that was currently her life as she lost herself in Amestris and the troubles of the Elrics instead of her own.

Still, she was a little freaked. It was just _so_ similar. The eye shape, the length of the hair, the hairstyle ... _the freaking screwdriver_ … so when her phone beeped as it usually did, she jumped nearly a foot. Stuffing the bookmark back into the book, she looked to see who had texted her.

 _(857) 555-7490_  
It’s Alan.

The number she didn’t recognize, but there was only one Alan with her cell number. She stared at the short message for a few moments. It just seemed a little surreal. She had been hoping to become friends with this guy since she had first met him, and here she was about to be texting him about a school project. She didn’t hesitate to add his name to her contacts, or text him back.

 _Kai Dallas  
_ Hey, Alan. So, project? 

_Alan Cirle  
_ Yeah … what are you thinking?

 _Kai Dallas  
_ Well, Spain, right? 

_Alan Cirle  
_ Yep.

Yet even as she texted him, Kai couldn’t get the image of the Winry doppelganger out of her head … on impulse, she got up from her bed and walked across her room to her desk. She quickly booted her laptop, tapping her fingers impatiently as she waited for everything to fire up. As soon as it would let her, she opened Firefox and typed in the address for Google.

Selecting the option for ‘images’ at the top of the page, her fingers hovered hesitantly above the keys before they entered _FMA_ _Winry Rockbell_ into the search bar. After browsing through multiple thumbnails, she finally selected one. Kai bit her lip – she was being positively foolish. Ah well, she’d have her laugh and then the entire incident would be forgotten. That would be good. She couldn’t afford to have this distracting her.

Right click.

Print.

* * *

Edward leaned against the wall of Somerville High School’s main lobby, his hands shoved into the pockets of his rain jacket. He kept most of his weight on his right leg – rainy weather caused his stump to hurt when he put pressure on it. Back in Amestris, when he had proper automail, the pain hadn’t been nearly as bad as it had been for the past ninety-five years or so with his chimera of a prosthetic. It wasn’t the ideal situation, but it was the only one … and if there was anything Edward Elric could do well, it was making do with what he had.

With a little bit of effort, he pushed himself away from the wall to limp out to where he could more easily see down the hall. Al was definitely taking an unusually long time to get down to the front today … Ed wondered where his brother could have gotten caught up. Distracted with scanning the crowd for Alphonse, he didn’t see the girl storming toward him until it was almost too late.

Luckily, he managed to move out of the way just enough that it was a glancing blow rather than a full-on collision. The girl who rammed into him shot him a murderous, teary blue glare and didn’t even apologize as she strode off. Ed recognized her with surprise – he didn’t know her too well, but Kai Dallas was in most of his classes. Despite the Elrics’ reluctance to make friends with anyone, it had just sort of happened due to her constant presence. It wasn’t like they were best friends – they hardly talked outside of class – but they were friends enough that Edward was slightly concerned about what had happened.

Alphonse came up not too long after. “Sorry I’m late,” he apologized, and Edward turned back towards him from where he had been watching Kai leave. Al looked at him. “Brother, what’s wrong?”

“It’s nothing, really,” Ed replied, rubbing his arm where Kai had rammed into him. The girl might be short, but she was definitely solid. “Kai just stormed out here looking really upset. I know we don’t really know her, but I can’t help but wonder what’s wrong …” He hated seeing girls cry.

“So she really _wasn’t_ okay …” Al mused, thinking about when she had left him.

Ed looked inquisitively at his little brother. “What do you mean?”

“Oh. Uhm … I’ll tell you on the way home.” Al hadn’t realized he had spoken aloud, and now he’d have to tell Ed about the Spanish project … and the fact he and Kai had exchanged numbers … and that Kai had seen the picture of Winry he kept in his locker … he swallowed hard.

“Okaayy,” Edward replied, drawing out the word skeptically. “Come on, let’s go. I have a freaking English essay to write tonight.”

“Brother! You need to stop putting these things off until the last minute!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” the elder brother said, resettling the backpack slung over his shoulder. “It’s not like these classes actually matter, right? Besides, I always get it done.”

Alphonse sighed. Nine decades hadn’t done anything to temper his brother’s personality, it seemed. As they exited the school into the dreary weather beyond, however, his thoughts turned to the situation at hand. What would be the best way to tell Ed about the project? And the picture? When they had first talked about going back to school, Al had been certain it would be his more volatile brother who would eventually blow their cover. In an ironic turn of events, it seemed, it would be his fault if things fell to pieces.

Eventually, he just blurted it out.

‘Dammit,’ Edward cursed in Amestrian as there was no one else around to hear him them. ‘Dammit, dammit, _dammit_.’

‘Brother?’ Al prompted his sibling gently when he didn’t expound any further on the subject, easily sliding into Amestrian as well.

The older Elric brother exhaled loudly, never taking his eyes off the road in front of him. ‘We knew this would be difficult, especially with that freaking anime out now,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t think we would be discovered _this_ soon. Shit …’

Alphonse thought for a moment before his mouth hardened. ‘Well, we haven’t been discovered yet,’ he said firmly. ‘There’s still a possibility Kai won’t think anything of it. And if she does … Brother, I think we can trust her.’

‘We thought we could trust Hiromi,’ Edward muttered in response, glancing moodily out the side window, ‘and we both know how well _that_ turned out …’ he paused. ‘But … if Kai already knows everything … perhaps she could help us.’

‘Help us? How?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Ed admitted, ‘but there has to be something. If she’s smart enough to discover the truth and if she’s open-minded enough to accept it without freaking out …’ he trailed off. The ‘not freaking out’ part was probably the most important piece of the matter. The boys knew what fangirls could be like, and it quite honestly scared them.

‘It _would_ be nice having an ally outside of you and Dad,’ Al agreed.

‘Yeah …’

They pulled into their driveway not too long afterward. From the absence of their father’s car, the brothers could tell that their he wasn’t home yet. A heavy silence settled over the two of them as they climbed out of their car and grabbed their bags.

‘Hey, Ed?’ Al asked as they walked up toward their house. When his older brother looked at him, he continued, ‘We … we need to tell Dad. This involves him as well, you know.’

‘Yeah,’ Ed agreed. ‘You’re right, as usual. We’ll tell him when he gets home.’


	7. Friday, June 07 (2013)

Impossible.

This … this wasn’t happening.

She knew it wasn’t happening because it was impossible.

It wasn’t happening because it was fucking insane and it wasn’t happening because it was completely and utterly … _happening_.

It _was_ happening.

Those hints, those little nuances that just can’t be quashed … those are impossible to plant. It’s impossible to be one person for so long and not essentially _be_ that person, even when trying to be someone else. There will always be those small misalignments that shouldn’t make any sense – that _don’t_ make any sense. They don’t make sense – at least not right away – but then they _do_. It’s impossible to be someone else, even for those two. _Especially_ for those two.

Kai looked down at the papers clasped in her rapidly clenching fist. She didn’t move as the abused photos fell to the floor. She hardly even felt it as her knees hit the rug with a dull thud that didn’t even register because this _wasn’t fucking happening_. A sickening pulse throbbed violently through her aching head and her heaving chest and her arms and legs and oh … that was just her heart.

She was panicking. She was panicking and not breathing properly. Ragged, shallow gasps ripped through her form and she struggled to convince herself just one more time that it was ‘all just a coincidence’ and that she was overreacting because ‘it’s not happening it’s not true it can’t be true.’

But did she really know the Truth?

She inhaled a shaky breath as she felt phantom, angry, _falsely_ blue eyes staring at her. Blue eyes. Gold eyes. Amber eyes _…_ oh, God. How could she face them after this? Would she be able to handle it, knowing what she believed she knew now, come Monday? Oh, God. Oh, dear God. Collapsing backwards off her knees, Kai knocked her head against the corner of her bedpost. It wasn’t a harsh pain that she felt, but it was enough for her to register that _this isn’t a dream._ That there? That pain was real. That just happened. Those pictures, that article? They were still there.

Forget about everything, she told herself. Breathe normally. In. Hold. Out. Hold. Repeat.

Breathe.

The initial panic was receding, and with the clearing of her head came the conclusion that this revelation was most likely a long time in coming. That realization, however, didn’t lessen the feeling that she had been shoved out a plane without a parachute only to be told “Don’t worry, that Mack truck will catch you with its front bumper.”

She _knew_ she should have left it well enough alone. Curiosity killed the cat, the old adage warned, and Kai certainly felt close to dead inside. She had always longed for adventure, for something exciting … and now it seemed she had gotten what she’d wished for.

It was funny, as ‘Be careful what you wish for’ was yet another adage that applied itself perfectly to the situation at hand.

With her breathing back under tenuous control, Kai looked once more at the evidence that lay before her. The top paper was the picture of Winry Rockbell that she had printed off the computer on Monday. That picture had been the first in a series of bad ideas had ultimately culminated in the destruction of the world as she knew it. Looking back on it, she wondered what absurd compulsion had gripped her. In hindsight, it looked to be a totally wild decision from way out in left field.

Her thoughts took her back to that Wednesday: June 5, 2013

When the rest of her pre-calc class went down to the cafeteria for their lunch period, Kai had turned the opposite way down the hall. Her heart pounded as she walked hurriedly against the flow of traffic, grunting softly as she knocked into rude teenagers that couldn’t be bothered to look where they were going. As soon as she got through the mass of people, she started fishing through her bag for the picture she had printed out. She had no clue why she was about to do what she was about to do. Instead of turning down the hall that would take her to her own locker, she veered off toward someone else’s: Alan Cirle’s.

Her anxiety levels rose exponentially as she stood in front of locker number 452. Biting her lip, she carefully lifted the latch mechanism and pulled the door open. Unlike her own locker, Alan’s locker didn’t make copious amounts of noise when she opened it. Grateful for that little bit of good fortune, Kai took a deep breath before holding the picture of Winry Rockbell up to the photograph of the Cirle brothers’ grandmother.

For several moments, she looked between the two faces. They were similar, yes … but they weren’t exactly the same. Of course they wouldn’t be, she knew, one was a real person and the other was an animation. Still, the shape of the young woman’s face was close enough to make Kai look again. There was also the fact the woman in the sepia photograph held a screwdriver and a scrap of metal in her hands …

Wait ... the girl in the photograph … were those earrings in her ear? Those _were_ earrings – four of them. Two hoops and two studs. In her left ear.  Kai could feel her heart in her throat and her head throbbed. It wasn’t the multiple piercings that bothered her – she herself had both her ears double-pierced – but rather the fact that the photo had to have been taken in the early 1900s. Multiple piercings weren’t a thing back then … were they?

But there was no denying it. And … and … and the piercings matched Winry Rockbell’s earrings. Exactly. And the clothes … now that she looked closely, Alan’s ‘grandmother’ didn’t seem to be wearing clothes that belonged in the early 1900s. Early 1900s in this universe, anyway.

Kai had slammed the locker closed, unwilling to face the possible possibilities. She had not, however, been able to slam her thoughts closed in the same way. The images of the Cirles’ grandmother and Winry Rockbell plagued her mind for the rest of the day, robbing her of her focus. In gymnastics she fell off the beam, fumbled on the floor, and nearly lost her grip on the uneven bars.

Her two saving graces had been that she hadn’t had to go back to pre-calc, and that she hadn’t had Spanish that afternoon – facing Al … an was the last thing she wanted to do.

In the present, her attention shifted over to the article she had gotten her hands on just half an hour previously. After stewing over the image of the Winry Rockbell doppelganger for hours on Wednesday night, she had decided to take things a step further. She had already done one crazy thing – what would one more hurt? And so, unable to sleep in the early Thursday morning hours, she had begun Googling … but she hadn’t had much success.

**_Search:_** _Edward Elric  
_ Fanart.

**_Search:_** _Alfons Heiderich  
_ Fanfiction.

**_Search:_** _Thule Society Edward Elric  
_ Tumblr link.

**_Search:_** _Edward Elric Rocket Propulsion  
_ FMA wiki.

**_Search:_** _Alfons Heiderich Rocketry  
_ Cosplay photos.

At last, when her alarm clock had hit upon a number way past the time she should have gone to bed … she had given up. It should have been reassuring, finding only results from the anime and various fansources. After all, that was what she had expected … right? And yet, Kai had been unsatisfied as she’d slid under her covers in hopes of getting maybe four hours of sleep. There was still something bothering her, something telling her that something else was not quite right.

She would try once more, and then give up once and for all. If there was anyone who knew how to get something off the internet, even the most obscure and hidden data, it was her best friend’s younger brother. When she had picked Christopher up on Thursday afternoon, she’d made her request. Neel had given her an odd look, but she’d covered quickly with an excuse about a project for history class. Thankfully, he hadn’t asked any further questions.

Never, _never_ had she thought he would _actually_ come back to her with the data she’d asked for.

Despite how much she had felt there was something there, some little bit of truth behind her wild, illogical goose chase ….

_Elric, Edward. (b. unknown d. unknown)  
Elric, Alphonse. (b. unknown d. unknown)_

She had never prepared herself for what she would do if everything came back positive.

_As young German scientists based in Munich circa 1923, E. Elric and A. Elric were early pioneers in the field of rocket propulsion sciences. While not outright credited with any discovery or invention, there is evidence that it is these two young men that first attached the de Laval nozzle to the combustion chamber of a liquid-fueled rocket engine, and not the American physicist Dr. Robert Goddard. This nozzle more than doubled the thrust and raised the engine efficiency from 2% to 68% …_

… And that’s how things had turned out.

* * *

Along with the article, there was another picture that Neel had so kindly printed for her. In the image, there was no denying that the German scientists and the Cirle brothers were the same people.  Their hair was lighter in the photo – most likely their natural blond rather than the dyed brown they currently wore – and their clothes were what they would have been in the 1920s. Kai couldn’t tell what color their eyes were in the greyscale photograph, but without the offsetting blue color it was easier to see through their disguise.

Of course, she thought as she scanned the photographs more critically, they wouldn’t have needed a disguise back then – the photo and article were over eighty years older than the manga. This then brought up a new question … how the hell were they still alive? Surely, if the two of them had come through the Gate in 1921 – as was stated in the movie – they should have died long before now. At the very least they should have been old men, with children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Perhaps Eric and Alan were relatives of the scientists … ? No. Kai quickly cast that idea aside as she scanned the photographs. The boys she knew and the young men in the picture were too similar to only be related to each other. Genetics could be freaky, but the likelihood was near impossible.

Of course, it _was_ the day for impossibilities, wasn’t it?

Almost entirely recovered from her earlier freak-out, Kai found her curiosity and sense of adventure returning. Her scientific upbringing was taking over – how had they lived this long? How much of the manga was true? How much of the anime? Obviously, there were bits and pieces of each that were true. They might have ended up on this side of the Gate, but Alphonse looked as he did in Brotherhood. Besides that, some aspects of the movie had been completely made up – if she were to take the article as fact, it was Alphonse _Elric_ who had worked with Edward on the rockets, not Alfons Heiderich.

Did Al have the amber eyes of Brotherhood or the grey eyes of the original anime? And then Kai realized it wasn’t just the Elrics who were real … obviously, Winry was a real person as well. The thought thrilled her – Winry, after all, had been her favorite anime character – well, maybe not ‘character’ – back in the day. If Ed and Al and Winry were real, then so was Mustang, and Riza, and … and every-freaking-body else from the series!

She clapped her hands over her mouth as she let out a small ‘eep!’ Running her hands back through her hair and taking a deep breath, she fought to calm herself for the second time that afternoon.

It all made _sense_. The odd sentences she had heard the brothers say. The metal prosthetic she had seen on Eric … Edward … goddamn that was going to take a while to get used to. Alan’s soft spot for cats. And – here, Kai couldn’t help but giggle – Er- Edward’s reaction upon meeting Katherine for the first time. A girl, three inches taller than he was? Of course his Napoleon complex had kicked in!

But … eighty years before the manga? The realization hit her with all the force of the Mack truck. It had been over ninety years since either of the boys had seen anyone else they had grown up with. Ninety years since the brothers had seen Winry. Ninety years since … anything. The thought sobered the girl and she reached down to touch the pictures gently. She couldn’t imagine going a year without Katherine. What the boys must have had to put up with … she shuddered even thinking about it.

Completely lost in thought, she didn’t move from her spot propped against her bedpost for quite some time. There were so many things tumbling through her head she didn’t know where to even start trying to sort them out. School, gymnastics, life … Elrics. What she needed was a break, but she knew she wouldn’t get one for a while. School would be done in a little over two weeks, and then she’d be flying out to California. Even with Katherine staying for a couple weeks, her visit with her father wouldn’t be all fun in the sun.

It wasn’t that Kai wasn’t looking forward to the internship at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory – on the contrary, she was curious as to what her dad did every day. Besides, it didn’t hurt that it would look fantastic on college applications, even if she had no intention of entering into the field of science. She was also excited to spend an entire two and a half months with her father – she’d never had that much time with him, ever. Despite seeing him over Skype a couple times a week, she still missed him terribly.

… It was just that she wouldn’t even really have a summer reprieve from the ball of stress that her life was tangling itself into. And once she went back to school for her senior year, it would all be college visits and applications and form after form and standardized tests galore …

The vibration in her pocket brought her around to reality again. She forced herself to stand, grabbing the footboard to help haul herself up. Ouch. She realized she must have been sitting there for longer than she thought as the sensation of pins and needles rippled its way through her lower right leg. Keeping most of her weight on her left foot while setting her right one down gingerly, she pulled her phone out of her pocket to see what the alert had been.

**Reminders (1 item):**

_Friday, June 7, 2013  
_ Dinner w/professor: 5:00 pm

Shit. Shitshitshit. She had completely forgotten about that. Since Monday, her mother had been reminding her about the guests they were hosting for dinner on Friday – that Friday being today. In light of her discovery and resulting breakdown, everything else had just faded into the background. This was not good. It had to be today, didn’t it?

Her mother worked with one Mr. Cirle. She didn’t have until Monday. She had approximately one hour.

Luckily, she had set the notification to go off an hour earlier than necessary. Therefore, the Cirles … Elrics … Elrics … Cirles – she didn’t even know anymore! – wouldn’t be at her house until six, which gave her some time to pull herself together.

Aw, crap.

Her world was fractured. No, that was meant quite literally. While it hadn’t been noticeable when she was concentrating only on things close to her, now that she was looking around her room it was blaringly obvious that she only had her right contact in. The papers at her feet blurred, half in focus while the other half was affected by her bad eye. It was an odd sensation; one that Kai had never quite gotten used to even after years of using contact lenses.

Scrubbing her face clear of encrusted salt from tears she didn’t remember shedding, Kai took a deep breath and left her room. Making a direct beeline for the bathroom, her mind began warring with itself. Would she have the courage to confront the boys about their identities that night, or would she just let it pass as she did most other conflict in her life? Her thoughts whirled in circles, never settling on any definitive answer. As she stood in front of the bathroom mirror, she finally settled on one question –

_What the hell would she tell Katherine?_

Kai stared at her reflection in the mirror above the sink, and her split reflection stared back. Her double’s eyes were wide and red-rimmed and swollen. Pin-straight dirty blonde hair swept back haphazardly from the girl’s face, disheveled from the number of times panicked fingers had run through it. Winking back and forth, Kai thought on how she had always taken pride in the fact it would take more than one hit to knock her to the ground … but at that moment, the crazed girl slipping in and out of focus before her looked as if she would fall over with the slightest push.

Turning away from the mirror, she removed her remaining contact and threw it into the trash. It was about time she switched them out anyway, and who knew if she would actually be able to find the one she had lost on her bedroom floor. She reached for her glasses, but remembered they would still be in her gymnastics bag from earlier that day. Her vision was still blurry, but at least she had lost the disorienting half-and-half effect.

Kai knew she couldn’t hide upstairs all night. She wouldn’t be able to hide away for the rest of her life; she would only be delaying the inevitable. Steeling her nerves and checking to make sure she wasn’t still showing outward signs of distress, Kai told herself that her mother would be needing help in the kitchen. Stay busy, was her advice to herself.  Stay busy, and don’t think. Stopping in her room for only a second in order to grab her glasses from her bag, she slid them onto her face and slowly wandered downstairs.

Unfortunately, telling yourself things is _always_ easier than actually doing them.

“H-hey, Mom,” she asked, surprised at the hitch that remained in her voice, “is there anything I c-can do to help?”

Marie Dallas turned from where she stood at the counter. Despite her best efforts, Kai couldn’t keep it together. The sight of her mother doing average, mundane things in the midst of everything average and mundane crumbling around her was enough to cause the girl to lose it once more. Her façade collapsed as quickly as she had erected it and it wasn’t long before Marie was drying her hands on a towel and making her way over to her distraught daughter.

“Kai, Sweetie, what’s the matter?” the auburn-haired woman asked, crouching slightly so that she was at eye level with the teenager. The last time Marie had actually seen her daughter cry was when she was in eighth grade and received the news that Kathy’s father had died in Afghanistan, so she knew something big must have happened. Of course, she wasn’t completely ignorant. She knew something had been bothering her daughter for the past few weeks, but she hadn’t said anything – Kai always came to her when she was ready to talk. It was just the way of things.

And, as Kai broke down in the middle of the kitchen, the teenager realized this wasn’t something she would be able to handle on her own. Looking at her mother’s face through vision that blurred through tears, she spoke through hiccoughed words.

“P-promise me y-you w-won’t … think … I’m c-crazy?”

* * *

After Kai had calmed down once again, she had told her mother to wait a moment as she fetched the documents off her bedroom floor. As she handed them over, she watched the older woman’s face in trepidation. Throughout her story, her mom hadn’t said anything that would lead her to think that she believed her, nor had she said anything to shut her down. There had only been questions to clarify things Kai hadn’t explained clearly or had stumbled over in her story.

Marie had to admit – Kai’s story had thrown her for a bit of a loop. Had she been anyone else, or had her daughter been anyone else, it was safe to say she would not have believed it one bit. However, Kai had never lied to her … and the girl was so shaken up by the event she described in shaky tones and hitched sentences that Marie was forced to believe that there was at least some truth behind her daughter’s tale. The picture of Winry Rockbell didn’t do anything to confirm the story without the photo of ‘Alan’s’ grandmother, but the document about the German scientists was another story.

“Okay,” she said finally, looking up from the article.

Kai looked up from where she had been fiddling with the skin around her nails. This was it, she knew. If her mother didn’t believe her, she didn’t know what she would do. It would be impossible to act as if it had never happened, and her mom would probably think her crazy. She could end up in _counseling_ for this! She had been in counseling before, in elementary school, when Marie thought she might be having emotional problems due to the fact she never cried or got upset about anything – and it was something she didn’t want to have to go through again.

“I’m actually finding it hard _not_ to believe you,” Marie admitted, putting the article down on the table in front of her. “The question now is: what are you going to do about it?”

Shifting in the chair she herself was sitting in at the kitchen table, Kai bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she murmured quietly, although she knew she had been leaning toward the option where she did nothing. What was the use of making a big deal of it? It wasn’t like she would be good friends with them – they must have met hundreds, maybe thousands of people in their time, and they wouldn’t – they couldn’t – become close to any of them. “We’d only be troubling them if we told them we knew,” she said aloud.

“Sweetie, it might be what’s best for _them_ , but what about _you_? You’re just going to hurt yourself by keeping it inside,” her mother told her gently. “It’s going to eat away at your conscience, and eventually you’re going to slip and say something. You would save yourself a lot of stress if you came clean from the start,” she finished.

Kai sighed. She knew her mother spoke the truth, yet the anxiety in her chest had yet to let up. If she was going to make a decision, she had to make it quickly – she was down to only half an hour before she had to make it or break it. Looking up at her mother, she smiled weakly in a half-hearted attempt to pretend she was all right.

“Thanks, Mom,” she said quietly before pushing herself away from the table. “Thanks for, y’know, actually believing me. And … everything else.”

Marie looked at her daughter with eyes full of love and understanding. “Any time, Sweetie. What else are mothers for?” She quirked one corner of her mouth up at her own humor, and Kai couldn’t help but do the same. “Now scoot,” the auburn-haired woman said, standing as well. “I have a dinner to finish making.”

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Kai asked.

“Thanks for the offer, Kai, but I have it covered,” was the reply she received. “However, if you could go make sure Christopher hasn’t destroyed the television, I would be extremely grateful.”

“Sure thing, Mom,” she said with a chuckle.

Perhaps, just perhaps, she thought, clenching the papers a little tighter in her hands as she exited the kitchen. Perhaps she would be able to get through this. Only time would tell – and she didn’t have much of it left. Taking a deep breath, she called out.

“Christopher?”


	8. Friday, June 07 (2013) pt 2

**5:58 pm**

Kai worried her lower lip in anticipation. The Cirles – Elrics – Cirles … _whatever_ … would be at her house any time now. She had minutes – perhaps even seconds – to add the final touches to the calm façade she’d been perfecting all night.

**5:59 pm**

Her eyes drifted time and time again back to the papers that had been thrown carelessly on the coffee table in the living room. Well, they appeared to have been thrown there carelessly. In reality, she had spent several minutes arranging and rearranging the way they laid. It couldn’t look like a trap – it _wasn’t_ a trap, she told herself – but the picture had to be visible, along with some of the words, and it had to be in a place where it would be seen.

**6:00 pm**

It was the coward’s way out – she knew that. But … she just couldn’t face them herself. She knew that if she tried she’d stumble over her words until she either gave up or everything came out wrong. It was safer this way. There was less chance of a misunderstanding.

**6:01 pm**

“KaiKai?” Christopher’s voice cut into her troubled thoughts, “you’re hurting me.”

Kai immediately loosened the grip she held on the little boy in her lap. She hadn’t even realized she’d been hugging him closer and closer as her anxiety levels rose.

“Sorry, Bud.”

**6:02 pm**

Goddammit, she thought, watching the clock in the living room tick yet another minute past six. Where were they? As much as she didn’t want to see them, she wanted them to show up and put her out of her misery.

“Come on, boys,” she muttered under her breath.

**6:03 pm**

Should she have called Kathy? She should have called Kathy. Her mom had even suggested it – why hadn’t she done it? She could’ve used the support. Kathy would have believed her, too … or so she thought. Would she have? Or rather, would she? It was just so out there …. Did Kai have enough time still to call her best friend?

**6:04 pm**

“KaiKai!”

“Sorry, Bud.”

**6:05 pm**

Where the _hell_ were they?

**6:06 pm**

She still had a text from David she hadn’t responded to. She hadn’t even opened it yet. _tex, plz, talk 2 me,_ the banner had read … and she had promptly ignored it. She was so damn tired of his excuses and apologies, not to mention his poor grammar. Just because he was a boy didn’t mean he was incapable of using correct grammar while texting. Hell, Alan was one of her favorite people to text – he even used capitals. Dammit, she had to stop thinking about that.

**6:07 pm**

_There’s nothing to talk about_ , she wanted to send back.

But she didn’t have Kathy’s guts.

**6:08 pm**

That wasn’t even her biggest problem right now.

**6:09 pm**

Shit that was the doorbell. No, she wasn’t ready for this! No! Goddammit. Ten more curses fell through her mind, and it was all she could do to keep from muttering them right in her little brother’s ears.

“KaiKai!” Christopher complained once again, and Kai felt a ball of guilt welling in her throat.

“I’m so sorry, Chris,” she apologized. “Come on, up you get,” she said more lightly, lifting her brother from her lap. “Eric and Alan are here. You know, the boys I’ve been talking about for the past few weeks.”

The three-year-old’s grin widened, forgetting about his sister nearly squishing him for the third time. “Yay!” he exclaimed. “KaiKai,” he then said, as if suddenly realizing something, “have _they_ seen the fairies?”

Kai couldn’t help but laugh despite the growing pit of dread in her stomach as the two of them made their way toward the front door. Maggie still had her brother hooked on fairies, and she still thought it was one of the most adorable things. “I don’t know,” she told the tow-headed boy. “You’ll have to ask them.”

“Kai? Can you get the door?” Marie yelled from the kitchen, her hands busy with the lasagna that was for dinner.

“I’ve already got it, Mom!” she called back, not letting go of her brother’s hand. With a deep breath, she finally stepped into what could be considered the foyer. “It’s show time,” she muttered to herself. Plastering a smile on her face, she opened the door to the three men that stood outside.

“Uhm, hi,” she stated simply upon seeing the faces before her. “Come in, come in,” she said, mentally scolding herself for her lack of eloquence. She quickly scurried out of the doorway, allowing the Elrics – Cirles – _Cirles_ – to pass by. Once everyone was inside, she closed the door behind them. “Mom is in the kitchen, if you want to say hi,” she told Eric and Alan’s father. “Oh! Shoes can go there,” she said, pointing, “and, uhm, I’d say I’d take your coats but it’s the middle of June soo …”

She should just stop talking, she realized as she felt her face burn in embarrassment. She didn’t blush red – at least not often – but her cheeks grew hot as if she did. And this … this was definitely one of those moments. She almost kicked herself – this was why she wasn’t going to be actually confronting the boys any time soon.

“It’s Karmyn, right? Kai? My sons have mentioned you.” Kai looked up when she realized the boys’ father – Hohenheim? Or should she say Van? What was his alias? – was talking to her. Her cheeks burnt even hotter as she comprehended what he was saying – Ed and Al had been talking about her with their father?

“Oh! Uhm, yes,” she said, taking the proffered hand in a handshake. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Cirle.”

“Vincent,” the man corrected her.

“Vincent,” she repeated back before letting go of his hand. For all the stern lines on his face, he seemed to be a very nice man.

“Vince?” Marie walked out into the hallway, drying her hands on a dishtowel. “Sorry, I’m running a little late … things came up,” she said. Even without a glance in her direction, Kai knew her mother was referring to her. For the third time in so many minutes, she felt heat prickling across her cheeks. It took everything she had not to mutter a small ‘sorry.’ She was trying _not_ to give it away.

“It’s fine,” the man said, “we are too.”

As her mother and ‘Vincent Cirle’ lapsed into conversation about work, Kai turned to the brothers. Until now, they too had been standing awkwardly in one corner of the small hallway. She couldn’t help but wonder if they felt as awkward as she did at that moment. It would be pretty damned hard, she thought. She and Ed- E _ric_ weren’t even really friends. They talked sometimes, sure … but not an overly large amount. As for Alan, she could consider him an almost-friend. After that Spanish project – which they had done exceedingly well on – they had continued texting every now and again. And they were friends in class …

“Uhm,” she began, as she was seemingly unable to start any of her sentences any other way that night, “Eric, Alan, this is my little brother, Christopher.” As she spoke, she dragged a suddenly shy Christopher out from his hiding spot behind her legs.

“Hi,” the little boy said timidly, still clinging to his sister’s leg.

“Go on,” Kai encouraged him, “you were all excited a couple minutes ago.” When he shook his head adamantly, she looked up at the Cirles apologetically. What she hadn’t expected was that a few seconds later, Ed- Eri- – fuck this – _Edward_ knelt before the boy.

“Hey, Christopher. My name is Eric, and this is my little brother, Alan,” he said, gesturing to Alan – Alphonse – yeah, she was just gonna think of them as Edward and Alphonse from now on – behind him. The younger Elric walked up until he was standing beside his brother a few feet in front of Kai. Al smiled at her, and she shot a strained one back at him.

“How old are you?” Al asked, looking down at the boy.

Christopher looked up at Kai, who nodded. He then shifted his attention over to the Elrics for a few moments before holding up a small hand with three fingers extended. “Three,” he announced proudly.

Kai didn’t miss the look that the boys exchanged. _Elicia_ , she realized suddenly. She had been three when the boys had first met her, hadn’t she? Had she done the finger thing to them, or only to Winry? She couldn’t remember. But even if she could, did things really happen the way they had been portrayed in the manga and anime? It was kind of mind-numbing to think that while Ed and Al were real, most of the events in the manga may not have been. After all, Arakawa had only had the Elrics’ words to go off – so most of the events with Mustang or Winry or any time when the Elrics weren’t around were most likely completely fabricated …

“Kai?”

With embarrassment, she realized the boys had been speaking with Christopher for the last couple seconds while she had zoned out completely. Now they were trying to get her attention and … dear God, she just couldn’t do this. She just couldn’t! Her cheeks flamed up for the billionth time that night.

“Uhm, yeah,” she said, trying to cover her inattention. “We don’t have to stand in the doorway all night … follow me,” she finished awkwardly.

* * *

The Elric boys followed Kai through her house, as they hadn’t been given much of a choice in the matter. Al watched as Christopher walked next to his sister, occasionally glancing back at both him and his brother. He hadn’t known much about Kai’s little brother – of course, it wasn’t surprising given he and Kai didn’t talk a whole lot. In any case, he was adorable, and Al could see that Kai loved him to pieces.

He sighed as he and his brother followed their classmate. Nobody said anything, and it wasn’t a comfortable silence that hung between them all. Christopher hummed on about something, and Alphonse caught his brother’s eye. They were both thinking the same thing, he realized. They always were. It was always little Elicia Hughes. In every small child they’d met in their years on this side of the Gate, they’d seen either her or Nina Tucker. Along the road, the glance the two brothers exchanged had become less and less of a promise of return … and more one of resigned acceptance.

The fire that had once been in Edward’s eyes at the thought of anyone back home wasn’t there in this exchange. Al quirked a side of his mouth in a sad smile, and his brother returned it halfheartedly. We will get back, the younger Elric wanted to say, there must be something we haven’t tried yet … but he’d stopped lying to himself years ago. In cases like these, quiet acceptance was less painful than stubborn rejection.

“This is our living room,” Kai announced, breaking both Elrics from their thoughts. “Uhm, yeah,” she continued, “you can sit down if you like, or …”

Edward didn’t hesitate in taking a seat, sprawling out lazily as he tended to do. Al found it difficult to restrain himself from rolling his eyes. “Brother,” he murmured exasperatedly under his breath. A small giggle from beside him caused him to look over at the girl standing there, a hand over her mouth in an attempt to stifle the noise.

“Ah, no, it’s nothing,” Kai waved him off quickly. “I just … thought of something.”

“Al?” Edward’s voice cut through the room like a knife, and Al could hear the layer of panic that coated it. It was enough to catch his attention immediately, and he turned away from Kai as the elder Elric leaned forward to pick up a piece of paper that had been lying on the coffee table. Even though he was no longer looking at her, he clearly heard the gasp that escaped Kai’s lips.

“I, uhm, I – I have to see Mom about something real quick. I’ll be – uhm – I’ll be back in a minute,” Kai said quickly, stumbling over her words before she dashed out of the living room toward where Alphonse presumed the kitchen to be, Christopher trailing behind her.

“Al … you really have to see this,” Edward ventured, scanning the white sheet in his hand with wide blue eyes. As Alphonse stepped closer, his brother held the first piece of paper in the small pile toward him. ‘Read this,’ he prompted, switching to Amestrian.

Al was only a couple sentences into the page when he realized. A cold tingly sensation washed over him. Was it dread? Was it anticipation? He didn’t know. ‘She knows,’ he stated simply, looking up from the paper.

Edward met his stunned expression with a grim one of his own. ‘It’s not like we didn’t expect it,’ he said as Al took a seat on the sofa. ‘It’s kind of funny, in a way …’

Ed couldn’t help but feel that everything was happening all at once.

For example: the night he and Al had told their dad about Kai was the same night their father had accepted a dinner invitation from one of his coworkers. ‘Just because we’re living undercover,’ Hohenheim had said, ‘doesn’t mean we can’t be civil.’ The brothers had vaguely remembered Kai saying her mother was a professor at Harvard. Surely there had to be several different chemistry professors at the school … right? When Edward had asked what the woman’s name was, the answer had caused two uneasy stomachs to flip.

‘Did you say Dallas?’ Alphonse had clarified; shocked … but not surprised.

‘She doesn’t have a daughter, does she?’ Ed had then asked in a last-ditch attempt at avoiding fate. The growing rock in his stomach had settled even further. Perhaps it was some other Dallas, he’d thought. It couldn’t be an entirely uncommon last name … right?

‘Actually, funny that you mention that,’ had been Hohenheim’s response, ‘she does. She’s actually about your age. Well, your physical age,’ he’d corrected. ‘You might know her.’

‘Yeah,’ He had muttered, leaning back where he sat and placing his palms over his eyes, ‘we do.’

‘Actually, Dad …’ Al then began, ‘we, uhm, actually had to talk with you about that.’

The Xerxestian man had then listened to his sons relay their story with great interest. What were the chances that the woman he had befriended at work would be the mother of the girl his sons had gotten entangled with at school?

Looking back on it, things had gone over pretty well. The brothers and their father had discussed the various outcomes, and decided on a couple of things. It would all depend on how this night – and the rest of the school year – went. They were already plotting their next move, though … the three of them decided they’d probably be moving to Australia next if they had to. _That_ , at least, had to be remote enough. Hiding in plain sight hadn’t worked out, so now they’d have to actually hide.

But neither brother really wanted to leave. As much as they knew keeping their identities secret was important, going back into school and society had reminded them how it felt to have friends, or at least how it felt to be around people.

And now … moving again looked like a definite possibility.

Edward forced himself out of his train of thought as he and Al looked through the other two papers that continued the article, but every further word confirmed their suspicion that their short blonde friend did indeed know who they were.

There was no doubt in his mind that Kai had set this up. While he hadn’t seen her leave, he was now very much aware of her absence. Although he didn’t know her very well, he did know that she was smarter than to leave the sheaf of papers lying out where they would be seen … unless she _wanted_ them to be seen. It hit him then why she had been stumbling over her words more than usual – she _knew_. She knew and felt awkward about it, and was nervous, and … yeah, he could forgive her for that.

‘Ed,’ Alphonse said suddenly, ‘she left a note.’

Edward gladly dropped the printed picture of Winry. Ninety years later, it still hurt to look at her face. Shifting closer to his brother and shifting his mind back to English, the he read the message left in Kai’s spikey handwriting.

_Eric, Alan …_

_I’m sorry._

_I won’t it up if you don’t – you can trust me on that. I wasn’t even going to tell you I knew, but I was convinced that that wasn’t the best plan.  I don’t want to make you uncomfortable. If you want to sever all connections with me after tonight, I’ll forgive you. You’re just trying to protect yourselves, and I get that._

_If you boys want to run away and move to Chile or something, that’s fine with me. However … you don’t need to hide here. I’m still willing to be your friend … if you want._

_Your secret is safe with me, Edward and Alphonse Elric._

_-Kai_

‘What do we do?’ Al asked, looking to his elder brother.

‘Well,’ Edward started hesitantly.

Together, the two boys made a decision that would greatly influence the rest of their lives.

* * *

Kai sat on a stool in the kitchen, listening to her mother and who she knew to be Van Hohenheim talk about bioengineering. Her pounding heart threatened to bust through her chest, and she _knew_ that in the other room, the two Elric brothers were talking about her. Dammit. She still hadn’t been prepared. She’d meant to walk out of the room casually, as if she actually had to talk to her mother, but then Ed had found the paper all too soon and that plan had flown out the window in her inability to function under panic.

She watched her mother set Christopher down on top of the counter as he giggled. When she had entered the kitchen, her little brother had left her for Mom, not that she blamed him. She wished that she could get away with running into her mother’s arms, but Hohenheim was there and she was almost seventeen years old, for crying out loud. But her mom knew. She had to know, what with the way Kai had run into the room with a wild look in her eyes.

Sometimes, Kai imagined herself boldly approaching the brothers, confident in all regards. _If your contacts are bothering you_ , she’d say, _I have solution and extra containers upstairs_. They would stare at her in disbelief and she’d continue, _I know they get pesky sometimes, and it’s not like you need them to see … unlike most people._ There would be silence as the boys judged their options. Then, Edward would approach her and say –

“Kai?”

– _Thank you._ No, not _Kai_ … what?

Kai whirled around in her seat to face the direction the voice had come from. She felt her heart stutter as she saw it was Edward in the doorway, observing her with an inscrutable expression. Biting her lower lip – hard – she stood slowly, refusing to break eye contact in a moment of strength that surprised her. She might never be able to face them with the full confidence she longed for, but she would be damned if she allowed herself to be trodden over.

“Yes?”

“Al and I would like to talk with you,” he said. He didn’t speak harshly, but his tone was hard and unyielding. It wasn’t a request, Kai could tell, and she swallowed nervously.

“Yeah, of course,” she said, nodding slightly. Just as she was about to follow Edward out of the kitchen, she caught her mother looking at her with a question in her eyes. Kai nodded once more, and then left the room. That had been the agreement – if Kai confronted the brothers, Marie would take the responsibility of informing Hohenheim. It had been the only way to get Kai to challenge the brothers directly.

Dear God, why couldn’t her life just be normal? She’d always wished for adventure and excitement … and now she wanted anything but.

It was with great trepidation that she reentered the living room. As she followed behind the elder Elric, she couldn’t help but think that she should have put everything together much sooner than she did. Eric – here she used his alias intentionally – walked much in the same way that Edward had been portrayed. Lacking the presence of the jacket he’d worn in the anime, his hands were shoved into his pants pockets. His gait was laid back, but not at all lazy … okay, maybe a bit of feigned laziness. Even now that he didn’t have an image to maintain, he hadn’t lost his mannerisms … the same mannerisms that Arakawa had picked up on and involved in the manga/anime series.

Alan was harder to see Alphonse in, she thought when she caught sight of the other boy sitting on the couch. Al had been a suit of armor for most of both animes, then either years younger or years older when there were finally scenes with him at the end. The hairstyle was the same as it was in Brotherhood, though, and although human eyes and anime eyes were almost impossible to compare, she could see where Arakawa had gotten the general shape from. He was also really sweet, like the Al from the anime … and …

Then again, she reconsidered as she tried desperately to escape the situation at hand; perhaps it wasn’t surprising she didn’t figure it out sooner. While their personalities were almost exactly the same as they had been in the animes and manga, their voices weren’t. They were eerily similar – both the Japanese directors and FUNimation had done a damn good job at finding voice actors that were close enough to fake it – but it was different enough that it was not instantly recognizable.

Plus, she hadn’t seen the anime in years.

“–ow?”

She clocked back into reality just as Edward finished speaking. Funny – she didn’t remember sitting down on the couch. Of course, that meant she also didn’t remember a word of anything Ed had just said.

“I – I’m sorry,” she stammered nervously. Dear God, _stammered_? “Could you repeat that? I … wasn’t listening.” She could tell this irritated the former alchemist, who muttered something under his breath. She didn’t know what he said, and frankly … she didn’t want to.

“I said, ‘How? How did you know?’” he repeated quietly, looking up at her through the brown bangs and unruly cowlick that just wouldn’t stay in his ponytail.

Kai bit her lip as she cast a side-glance at Alphonse. He, too, had the question in his eyes as he met her gaze. Dropping her eyes down to her hands in front of her, she thought of how best to approach the information.

“I … I guess I’ve known something was … different … since I first met you, really,” she began meekly. “Your eyes – well, contacts. They’re just too … _blue_. I mean, the blue eyes/brown hair combination is normal, yeah, but … the shade is just a little too bright to be natural … I think? And they’re the same exact shade … yeah, that’s more it, I think …” she trailed off, lost in her own thought on the matter.

“Uhm, yeah … there’s a reason for that,” Alphonse replied, shooting a look at his older brother. “ _Some_ one accidentally grabbed a pair out of my box that morning. Neither of us noticed until after that first day of school … and then we couldn’t change it. Changing it would have made it more obvious.”

“And so you ran with your mistake …”

“Moving on,” Ed grumbled. Kai huffed a little laugh.

“Then … then you said some things that didn’t really make sense. The verb tenses were off, or … something. Sorry, this was weeks ago, when I first met you both, so I don’t remember it too well. Oh!” She suddenly exclaimed, startling the two boys sitting opposite her. “Edward, when you met Kathy. You were agitated about something. I didn’t realize it until after I knew who you were, but it was because she’s like, five inches taller than you, right?”

Where she had found it in herself to tease the boy with the Napoleon complex, she didn’t know. When Edward’s eye twitched, she waited with baited breath, wondering if he’d explode into one of his infamous ‘short-rants.’ She thought he would, what with not having to hide his identity and all, but he managed to restrain himself.

Still, Kai rushed on. “It was mainly just little things at first,” she admitted, “things that would just serve to confirm the facts later on. You know I saw your prosthetic that day in gym,” she told Edward, “and you never drank your milk at lunch. Said something about ‘cow secretions,’ I remember. I thought it had sounded familiar at the time, but I couldn’t place it. And Al, you always asked about Gollum after you heard about him.”

She shifted her gaze down to a spot on the floor. “I was little things like that,” she shrugged. “But then … then I saw the picture of your _grandmother_ in Al’s locker and …” she paused after that as she saw the realization flash across their faces. Her hands picked at each other – this was going to be the hardest part to admit, but she knew she had to do it.

“You probably know that I used to be an otaku,” she said, wincing slightly inside at the use of the word. “I mean, if I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been so obsessed with Fullmet– _FMA_ and you wouldn’t be having this problem right now.” She’d corrected herself before using the term _Fullmetal Alchemist_. Usually, she wouldn’t care, but … the actual Fullmetal Alchemist was sitting across from her. It felt weird. Very weird. “And, uhm, well … I saw the picture, and she looked so _familiar_. And then I was reading the manga that afternoon and I realized where I had seen her before … I printed that picture … and …” here, she took a deep breath before pushing forward.

“I kind of went back into your locker to compare the two,” she muttered swiftly, shifting uncomfortably in her seat.

“I’m sorry?”

“I … kind of went back into your locker … and compared the two pictures,” she said, slower this time, but not any louder. Luckily, the two boys heard exactly what she said.

“I’m sorry!” she exclaimed before either of them could say anything. “I know it was wrong, and I’m sorry. But I really didn’t expect anything to come out of it, honest! I thought I’d just laugh at the coincidence, and then … y’know … life would continue. But,” she continued, more subdued after her outburst, “she had the same earrings. The same number, the same type, the same placement … and there was no way that could be a coincidence. Her clothes weren’t reminiscent of the 1910s, no matter what country. And so … then I couldn’t let it go.

“I realize now that it was a crazy conclusion to jump to, thinking that people from a fictional story were real, but I was dumb and overexcited. I think. I don’t really know what was going through my mind at the time.” She delivered the statement with a wry laugh. “For a few hours, I thought I was wrong. I searched you on Google. Every hit was related to the anime, and I thought I was going crazy. But it really is true. I wasn’t wrong.”

“No, you weren’t.” The voice she recognized as Ed’s reached her ears.

“You probably want to know how I got that article, right?” she asked, finding her feet fascinating.

“That would be helpful, yeah.”

Kai sighed. “I asked Neel, Kathy’s brother. He’s a whiz at computer stuff, and I’m obviously … not. I don’t know what databases he searched, but that’s what he gave me earlier today,” she said, gesturing to the paper that still lay on the coffee table.

“… Today?” Alphonse then asked, surprised. “You only found out today?”

It was all she could take – she burst out laughing, much to the astonishment of the two boys before her. “About an hour and a half ago, really,” she told them as she tried to calm herself down. “I thought I’d have until Monday. Obviously, I didn’t.”

“Right …” Edward replied, breaking the silence that had once more fallen upon them.

“So, uhm, yeah. You read my note … I meant everything I said. I really won’t blame you if you move to Chile or Zimbabwe or something … I’m a liability now, and I know that. It’s just … ah … I – I wanted to be friends with Eric and Alan, and … I mean, Edward and Alphonse aren’t all that different,” she confessed, nervous once more. Her fingers had switched from playing with each other to playing with the hair that fell across her face.

“We usually do leave when people find out who we are,” Al admitted gently. “Fangirls … have been an issue before. If we don’t leave, then we usually run into problems, even though no one believes them when they tell people we’re the Elric brothers.”

Kai’s heart threatened to rip in two with his words. Her friends meant the world to her, and she had issues with losing those that she called her friends. Now, it seemed that was exactly what would happen. And it was all her fault. If only she had kept her mouth closed, then perhaps they would have stuck around longer. Could have. Would have. Should have. It never did bake any bread.

“So,” she began, cursing the crack that had reappeared in her voice, “why haven’t you left yet?” Just go, she thought bitterly, just go now so I don’t have to deal with the dreaded anticipation for the moment you do.

“Well, it’s not like we’ve really had a chance to,” Edward said, sitting forward on his part of the couch. “But … uhg this sounds lame and cheesy,” he lamented, tugging at his bangs briefly. “You seem … different. You’re not freaking out, or losing it, or telling us that it’s impossible and that we’re faking it –” here, Kai snorted. They had no clue about what had gone down before they arrived. “– and you’re not … _fangirling_.”

He sighed. “When people find out, it’s usually been ‘oh my God, you’re Edward Elric! It was all true? Ohmigod!’ followed by various questions about Amestris and our friends. But you … you’re offering to back off. You’ve simply stated outright that you know. And, well … we’ve already discussed it.”

“What, really?” Kai couldn’t believe it – they’d already had such a conversation in the few minutes she had been out of the room?

“Kai, we guessed that if someone here figured it out, it would be you,” Alphonse answered, “and we were okay with that. We _are_ okay with that.”

“Don’t think you can help us get back, though,” Edward said. “We’ve probably already tried everything you could think of … it’s not worth the effort anymore.”

Kai thought for a moment. Did this mean that they wouldn’t be moving? That they weren’t mad at her for figuring it out? Both her head and heart were awhirl, and there were still many things she didn’t understand. She had questions – _so_ many questions – but it seemed that she _would_ get the chance to ask them later on. She looked up, meeting the boys’ eyes for the first time as Edward and Alphonse. The false blue looked back at her own natural blue, and it was there and then that she made up her mind.

“Well,” she said, meeting their gazes levelly, “I can certainly damn well try.”


	9. Saturday, June 08 (2013)

Later that night – once the Elrics had left and everyone else in her house was asleep – Kai clamped her sheets up to her mouth and ‘ _squee_ d’ like the fangirl she had once been. In the dark, she couldn’t stop the euphoria that rose up in her chest from bubbling out in badly suppressed giggles. Thinking back on the evening time and time again, the sixteen-year-old felt positively giddy.

She had met the Elric brothers! She _knew_ Edward and Alphonse Elric!

Amestris was real!

“Gah!” she exclaimed softly before she flipped over and shoved her face into her pillows. Her heart raced and it was all she could do to keep herself from waking the house in her exhilaration. After all the stress of the hours preceding the event of coming clean (and having had her fate held in the hands of two teenaged boys), the anxiety had finally given way to the reappearance of her inner fangirl.

They were … alive. They were _real._

They were real.

It was real.

It was _real_!

She wasn’t dreaming – although considering the hour, she probably should have been. As it was, she had already pinched herself so many times that the skin on her right forearm was red and irritated. She still couldn’t believe it. She just _couldn’t believe it_.

For once in her life, the girl was grateful for her lack of confidence. If she hadn’t been panicking, nervous, apprehensive, and anxious, she wasn’t sure if she could have kept her cool throughout the night. Edward had told her she had been different for not fangirling; she now suppressed an incredulous snort. Funny story, that. That was exactly what she was doing right now in the darkened privacy of her room. If she had acted like she was now while attempting to talk with the boys, she was sure things would have gone much differently.

But who could blame her, she wondered as she rolled back over in her bed to stare out the open window. She was practically living the fangirl dream! Her favorite ‘fictional’ characters from her favorite series ever had been in her _house_.

Fun fact, by the way: they weren’t fictional.

And they were so goddamned _attractive._

Kai grabbed one of the extra throw pillows from the corner of her bed and hugged it close, groaning into it. In light of recent events, she couldn’t help but remember that in eighth grade she’d had a massive fictional character crush on Edward, like any fourteen-year-old girl obsessed with anime. He just … those gold eyes – and muscles – and that animation and the Brotherhood age progression and – _Edward_. Uhg. But at the same time, she had shipped EdWin so hard, second only to Royai. It had been difficult – very difficult.

Once she’d started dating David, the insensible anime crush had faded. In the years since, it had disappeared completely, winking out of existence without her acknowledgement. Thank God. Kai couldn’t help but think that it could have caused an extremely awkward conversation, and _that_ was something she did not need.

Still … it didn’t change the fact that the boy – _both_ boys – were definitely as attractive as the manga and animes had portrayed them. If she’d had any doubts about whether personality had an impact on a person’s attractiveness before, she had them no longer. Sure, the Cirle brothers had been attractive. But the _Elrics_ … damn.

Another giggle escaped her before she lifted her head from the pillow and sighed. Her room was cool; the windows were open to allow the late spring breeze to blow through. Lying in silence, Kai could hear the flapping of a corner of one of her posters that hadn’t been secured properly. There was no moon in the sky that night, leaving the stars and her alarm clock as the only sources of light in the room. She breathed deeply, fighting a losing battle to calm her nerves so that she might possibly get some sleep that night.

Her thoughts kept circling back to the boys and their father, unanswered questions burning in her mind. There were questions about Amestris. There were questions about what they had been doing for the past ninety-someodd years. There were questions about her questions, and then questions about _those_ questions.

Kai hugged her pillow tightly, rocking back and forth on her mattress in an attempt to calm herself. The springs creaked sharply through the silence, drowning out the sounds of the flapping poster and the gentle breeze. The action didn’t help any, and so it was only a few seconds later that she ceased the movement. Collapsing onto her back once more, she shot a glance over to her alarm clock.

_1:03 am_

She should be sleeping. She _needed_ to be sleeping. With her schedule, she needed to steal as much sleep as she could whenever she could. As the clock ticked into the next minute, however, she knew sleep was not in the cards for that night.

Morning.

Whatever.

More than anything, she wanted to talk with Katherine. She had asked Ed and Al if she could tell her best friend … well, a better word would be ‘pleaded.’ She had presented her case around the point that telling her not to tell Kathy would be like telling Alphonse not to tell Edward or the other way around. “Besides,” she had said, “wouldn’t it be better to have two people to run interference and damage control at school, rather than one?”

To her utter astonishment, they’d agreed to her request.

“We know how it is to have to keep secrets,” Edward had told her. “It’s tough, especially when you have to keep it from those closest to you. If she’ll believe you, then –”

He hadn’t been able to finish his sentence before Kai slung her arms around his shoulders in a fit of ecstasy. She had backed off immediately, spewing apologies. Even now, in the privacy of her room, her face grew hot in embarrassment when she thought back on it. Fortunately, the building tension had been diffused once Alphonse had laughed at the both of them.

“Don’t I get a hug, too?” he had asked, jokingly.

Deciding she had nothing else to lose, she had hugged the younger Elric as well. It was in that moment that the pressure had lifted entirely. Her anxieties had faded away all but completely, giving way to pure, unadulterated joy.

“Kathy won’t tell anyone, I swear,” she’d told them with conviction.

In the present, she broke from the memory and sat up once more. Throwing the covers off, she swung her legs over the side of the bed. What was the use of lying down if she knew she wasn’t going to get any sleep? Debating her options, she carefully stood and trekked her way across the darkened room. Deftly avoiding that one part of her floor that creaked rather loudly when stepped on, she found herself sitting in front of her computer desk.

Even as she lifted the cover of her laptop, she wasn’t exactly sure of what she wanted to do. She did know it would be something to do with something to do with Fullme- FMA. Did she want to read the fanfiction she had once been so fond of, just to laugh at it? For a few moments, she also considered trying her hand at some deeper research on the two.

No, and no, she finally decided. The fanfiction thing was tempting, but that was an addiction she didn’t have the time to get sucked back into. As for the second option, it felt wrong going behind their backs. Anything she wanted to know, she could just ask them.

A few long moments later, she made up her mind and opened her web browser to type in the address to Netflix. She was then faced with another decision – Original Anime or Brotherhood? She settled on Brotherhood after a short debate, as she had been rereading her way through the manga. Besides, she had always enjoyed the Brotherhood plotline just a little more than that of the original anime.

That wasn’t to say she didn’t like FMA:O. They were both brilliant.

After plugging her headphones into the jack clumsily in the dark, Kai selected one of the episodes towards the middle of the series. The opening filled her with happiness and nostalgia – she hadn’t watched anime in _years_. As time ticked by, she found herself fully immersed in Amestris once again. The computer’s light in the dark room was hypnotic, and only later would she realize she couldn’t remember much after the first episode.

* * *

She woke to sunlight streaming through her window.

“Uuhn,” the girl groaned, lifting her head from where it was buried in her crossed arms. She couldn’t remember where she was for a second, but as she dropped her forehead back down into her palm, she realized what had happened. Running her fingers back through her hair, she squinted up at the computer screen before her. _Are you still watching?_ Netflix asked. One of her earbuds had fallen out in her sleep, but the right one was still wedged firmly in her ear.

Damn, she thought groggily as she pushed herself upright in her chair, what time is it? Her back protested loudly as she changed position, and she winced. She would be achy all day, she realized, and she was extremely glad that it was Saturday. At least she wouldn’t have to go to gymnastics practice that morning.

Grabbing her mouse, she shifted the cursor to the bottom of the screen in order to display the taskbar. Leaning close so that she could see the numbers, she groaned once more.

_10:02 am_

Her mother never let her sleep past ten-thirty on weekends. While she felt as if she hadn’t gotten any sleep in the nine hours she had been unconscious, it would be pointless to attempt to sleep any more. She would probably wake up after the twenty-eight minutes feeling even worse than she did now.

She pulled the remaining earbud from her ear. Running her finger around where it had been pressed for nine hours straight, she then straightened even further in her chair. Stretching her arms out, she heard several cracks from assorted places in her body. She stood, and very nearly toppled over. She caught herself with the edge of the desk right before she could make a nosedive into the floor.

After recovering the use of her legs, she tottered her way back over to her unused bed. She grabbed her glasses off her bedside table and slid them on clumsily. The sharpening of the world around her was a little disorienting, and it took a moment before she was completely readjusted. She yawned loudly, sitting down on the edge of her bed. A shiver racked its way through her, and she rubbed her bare arms in an attempt to warm herself up. Her purple spaghetti tank and grey sweatpants may have been comfortable while she was under her covers, but after spending the entire night exposed to the cool late-spring weather she was absolutely freezing.

It was this that spurred her into getting dressed. A pair of jeans and a sweatshirt later, she was much more comfortable.

On her way out of her bedroom, Kai slammed the top of her computer closed. If her mother came into her room for any reason, she wouldn’t be happy to see Netflix up. Since Kai was up around the same time she always was, Marie would be forced to come to the conclusion that she had either gone to bed a lot later than she was supposed to, or that she had woken up extremely early.

Given that Kai wasn’t a morning person, there was really only one conclusion. And that conclusion _would_ get her in trouble.

“’Morning,” she greeted her mother as she entered the kitchen and grabbed a Pop-Tart.

“Good morning, Sweetie,” Marie said, looking up from the book she was perusing through at the kitchen table. “How are you this morning?”

Kai grunted, as she had just taken a bite of the toaster pastry. A few moments later, she swallowed and replied.

“Tired,” she admitted, “I had difficulty falling asleep last night.” Well, it was a half-truth at the very least.

“That’s understandable,” her mother told her. “I didn’t sleep very well, either. It was a little too much to handle, don’t you think?”

Damn, what was it with her mother and asking questions when she had her mouth full? Instead of vocalizing a reply, she merely nodded. Marie accepted it as her response.

“Well, we’re going to have a lot to tell Dad when we go over there,” the older woman mused. “It’s a little sad, though. Those poor boys having been separated from their friends for so long …”

“Yeah,” Kai said, “that whole ‘immortality’ thing is a bit of a downer too.” When her mother glared at her, her hands went up in a ‘what?’ gesture. “I’m being serious, here!” she exclaimed.

Marie simply shook her head. “Go text Kathy. I’m sure you’re dying to tell her everything.”

Kai beamed. “Love you, Mom,” she said, pressing a quick kiss to her mother’s cheek before she was running back upstairs.

When she checked her phone for the first time that morning, she was surprised to see a text from Alphonse waiting for her. Her heart leapt into her throat for some inexplicable reason. They were actually interested in keeping contact with her! A quiet squeal escaped her throat, and she rushed to text him back.

_Alan Cirle_  
Are you okay this morning?

_Kai Dallas  
_ Tired, but yes!

It wasn’t long before her phone buzzed with a response.

_Alan Cirle_  
Good. Ed and I were worried.  
Are you telling Kathy today?

_Kai Dallas_  
I was just about to text her, to tell her  
to meet me.

_Alan Cirle_  
Do you want us there?

Kai thought about that for a moment. Normally, she’d say no, as she liked talking to her best friend alone. But … perhaps that wasn’t a good idea this time around.

_Kai Dallas  
_ Proof might be a good thing

_Alan Cirle_  
What time?

What time was it now? Quarter to eleven? Glancing over at her alarm, she confirmed her guess.

_Kai Dallas_  
11:30ish?  
My house.

_Alan Cirle  
_ Okay. I’ll tell Ed. See you then!

Kai couldn’t take it. The conversation had only been a couple minutes long, but it was Alphonse freakin’ Elric she was talking to! She collapsed onto her bed, allowing herself to stare dazedly at the ceiling. A few seconds later, she sobered up. She still had to text Kathy.

_Kai Dallas_  
Kath? Can you come over today?  
Around 11:15ish?

Suddenly, all the anxiety that had left her the previous night came back in a rush. She breathed deeply, refusing to allow it overwhelm her. She had handled the conversation last night perfectly fine – even with Hohenheim. She could do it again with her best friend. Her phone buzzed underneath her hand, and her heart leapt in a completely different way than it had earlier.

_Katherine Greene  
_ Yeah … why?

_Kai Dallas_  
Theres something I really need to  
tell you.

_Katherine Greene_  
You finally broke it off with  
that sleazeball?

_Kai Dallas_  
Planning on it, don’t worry.  
But not quite

Speaking of ‘that sleazeball,’ David’s text from the previous night still lay unopened on her phone. The little red circle on her text app constantly taunted her, but she was steadfastly ignoring it. She didn’t want to deal with it. She didn’t want to deal with him. Perhaps, if she ignored him long enough, he would get the message.

Kathy then proceeded to ask if she was okay, to which Kai replied that she was. The corner of her mouth quirked up in a humorless smile as she had the thought that, while her friend could guess a billion things … she would never come close to the truth.

The Truth.

Kai remembered vaguely the dreams she had, hunched over her desk and computer. They were all FMA-oriented, which didn’t surprise her after what had happened. She remembered Ed and Al’s near-voices clearly, along with Winry’s … probably due to the fact she was listening to the episodes for a good portion of her sleep.

In dreams, people do weird things, and things do weird … well. Things. This definitely applied to the vague, fuzzy memories she had. The only clear memory she had was that she had stood in front of Truth, in the white purgatory, and she had been scared as hell. What came after that, she didn’t know. Something about … tying the homunculi up with the squid-ink arms?

“Don’t think you’re getting out of this one,” she remembered saying.

Weird.

Looking at the clock on her phone, she saw that it was now eleven o’clock. She had fifteen minutes before she could get the second part of this fiasco done and over with. Her back complained as she sat up, and she bit back a curse.

“I am never, _ever_ sleeping anywhere other than my bed ever again,” she muttered angrily as she pushed herself off the said piece of furniture. Having nothing better to do, she spent the time she had left stretching out her muscles. If she didn’t, it would only be worse tomorrow – and gymnastics practice would be even more of a bitch.

* * *

“Kai? Your mum said you’d be up here … Girl, just _what_ are you doing?”

Kai collapsed out of the bridge position at the sound of her best friend’s voice. Was it already eleven-fifteen? She had lost track of time. Pulling herself into a seated position on her green area rug, she answered Kathy’s question.

“Stretching,” she said simply. “I slept funny last night or something – I’m kind of sore this morning … no, not _that_ kind of sore! Uhg.” It was another half-truth, at least the first part was. The second part was entirely true. She told herself that it was alright – as soon as she told Kathy everything, she’d rectify her little fibs as well.

Katherine entered the room fully, sauntering over toward where Kai now sat cross-legged. She didn’t mean to saunter – it was her natural gait. It wasn’t long before the taller girl was sitting cross-legged on the rug as well, facing her friend.

“What’s the low-down? Gimme the four-one-one, Kaigirl. I know you didn’t ask me here for nothing. How did dinner go last night?”

Kai took a moment to appreciate her friend’s clothing choices. Today it was a cropped maroon sweatshirt over a white tank top paired with black almost-booty shorts over grey leggings. Her combat boots had been ditched at the front door, revealing her preference for neon-colored socks.

“Kai?” Kathy prompted when the shorter girl didn’t answer right away.

“Right … uhm, well. I don’t really know how to say this, but …”

Katherine raised one perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Just spit it out. This is _you_ we’re talking about – it can’t be too shocking,” she said. Her words were caustic, but Kai paid them no heed.

“Well, I told you a couple weeks ago about picking up FMA again, right?”

“Yes …”

“And the same day, I told you Eric had that prosthetic.”

“Yeah, Kai … how are they related?”

“I’m getting there! Kathy, you watched _Conqueror of Shamballa_ with me, right?”

“That _Fullmetal Alchemist_ movie with the creepy black shit and that crazy bitch?”

“Yeah, yeah. That one,” Kai said, standing. Kathy watched with interest as she walked over to her bedside table and picked up a small sheaf of papers. “If you remember anything about that movie,” she said, sitting back down, “then perhaps this will mean something to you.”

She handed the papers over to her best friend and waited with bated breath as Kathy’s dark brown eyes scanned over the paper, flicking back and forth across the words.

“But …” the Anglo-Indian-American girl said in confusion, “It wasn’t actually Alphonse _Elric_ working on the rockets, was it? Wasn’t that one of the main plot points? That it was a double? Kai … what _is_ this? I mean, it looks official, but … it has to be fake.” She flipped through the pages desperately, struggling to decipher what her friend was trying to tell her. Kai could tell when her eyes found the picture of the two brothers.

“You’re joking,” Katherine finally said, looking up from the papers. Upon seeing the look on her Kai’s face, her breath caught in her throat. She swallowed hard. “You’re _not_ joking.”

“Kathy,” Kai finally said, the ‘k’ harsh as she spat the word out hastily, “I know it sounds insane. I know. I know you don’t believe me. I’m sorry. I should have known. It’s okay and we can forget about all of this and –”

“Kai –”

“– this never happened. I shouldn’t’ve told you. But I did. Because I couldn’t _not_ tell you –”

“Karmyn. Marie. Dallas.” Katherine snapped sharply, cutting through her sister’s hysterics. Kai trailed off at her friend’s tone. It was rare that Kathy ever used her given name, much less her middle and her last … and hardly ever all three of them at once.

“Calm down,” she commanded more gently upon Kai’s silence.

Did this … did this mean that Kathy wasn’t going to freak out? That maybe, just maybe … Kai’s friend believed the insanity that had become her life? She hoped so. Oh, God she hoped so.

“Now,” Katherine continued calmly, “Obviously, this article is either genuine or a _really_ clever fake. Where did you get it from?”

Kai, with her racing heart and shaking hands, did not have the patience for the way Kathy was approaching the matter. Still, she wanted her best friend to understand what was happening more than anything else in the world. Therefore, she forced herself to suppress her jitters and tell it the way it was.

“I asked Neel, actually,” she admitted, dropping her gaze from Kathy’s. “When I first looked online, all that came up were the anime results. He found it off some database or something.”

Kathy raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow at the mention of her brother, but said nothing. “Have you considered the fact that perhaps these scientists were the inspiration for the series? That these boys aren’t the Elrics, but the Elrics are these boys?”

“Yes! No …” Kai exclaimed, “Kathy …”

“And actually,” Katherine said, her face scrunching pensively, “why did you even ask Neel to find something like this in the first place?”

“Kathy,” she said once more, “these boys … the _Elrics_... They’re the Cirles. Eric and Alan? They’re … they’re Edward and Alphonse,” the blonde stuttered out.

Kathy’s wandering gaze snapped back to Kai. “You’ve _got_ to be shitting me,” she stated matter-of-factly.

“I swear I’m not! Kath, you’ve got to believe me!”

“This article is from the 1920s …”

“I know, I know,” Kai said for what felt like the hundredth time. Taking a deep breath, she started explaining the story for the third time. When she finished, Kathy blinked at her, floored by the legitimate-sounding information that had fallen from her lips.

“And you’re dead serious about all this,” Katherine said without question.

“Absolutely.”

The silence that followed was thick, not with tension but with the severity of the situation. Both girls sized the other up in a way they hadn’t done in years. Kai waited, her heart beating a million miles a minute. Kathy took a deep breath, and Kai’s heart skipped several of those beats. The other girl let it out, and then took another before finally speaking.

“Alright. I kind of believe you. I don’t know why, or how … or _why_ … but I do. And I suppose I’ll help you in any way I can, because I’m in this with you now, I guess. It’s not exactly the sort of thing one can say ‘I don’t want to have anything to do with this’ to and walk away from …”

She was cut off by an uncharacteristic squeal from Kai. A few seconds later she was knocked over by a short, stocky wall of muscle as her best friend wrapped her in an ecstatic hug of relief.

“Thank you,” Kai said. “Thank you so much.”

Kathy returned the hug for a few seconds, and then grunted. “Get off me, bitch. You’ll mess up my hair.”

However, before Kai could, the two were interrupted by a knock at the door. A familiar head poked into the room. Kai froze as she locked gazes with amber eyes.

“Is this a good time?” the boy asked, and the blonde pushed herself off her friend. Kathy said something, but it went in one ear and out the other. Only one thought was left running through her head –

_Amber eyes._


	10. Saturday, June 8 – Monday, June 10 (2013)

_“All right. I kind of believe you. I don’t know why, or how … or_ why _… but I do …”_

Edward and Alphonse had already been standing outside Kai’s bedroom door for quite a few minutes by the time the girls were alerted to their presence. Both boys knew that eavesdropping was wrong, but Edward couldn’t find it in himself to be guilty. When they heard Kai still talking with Kathy, they had considered returning downstairs – really, they had. But then they didn’t.

‘Should we go in now?’ Al whispered to his brother, quietly enough that the girls in the room wouldn’t hear. Something told him that Kai would not be pleased if she learned they had been eavesdropping. Edward debated for a few seconds, listening carefully to the sounds coming from within the room.

_“Get off me, bitch. You’ll mess up my hair.”_

‘Yeah, I think so,’ he decided. ‘Go on.’

Amber eyes met gold ones, and Alphonse sighed. ‘Why does it have to be me,’ he groaned quietly, ‘you’re older! And the ‘Fullmetal Alchemist’ himself, rather than just his brother!’

Ed shrugged. ‘You’re closer with Kai than I am. And Kathy doesn’t like me much.’

‘I can’t for the life of me see why,’ the younger Elric muttered under his breath. ‘Uhg. You can be so _infuriating_ sometimes. Fine, I’m going.’

Out of common courtesy, Al rapped on the door a couple times with his knuckles before pushing it open cautiously. Perhaps it’s better that I’m doing this, he thought, as Brother would’ve just barged in. He took a small step forward, just enough so that he could peer around the door. Before him, short and pale Kai lay sprawled out on top of the much taller and darker Katherine.

“Is this a good time?”

“What does it _look_ like?” he heard Kathy say from where she laid as Kai pushed herself back into a seated position on the floor.

But he wasn’t paying much attention to her. Kai was staring at him. Why was she staring at him? Lost for words, he only stared back.

* * *

_Amber eyes_.

Dear God. She knew, instinctively, that Alphonse would have amber eyes. Or grey eyes, she realized belatedly, if things had been closer to the Original. But … she hadn’t imagined what they would actually _look_ like. Well, now she had her answer.

They were absolutely gorgeous.

They weren’t yellow, but they could hardly be called hazel. Indeed, the best word to describe them would be amber. Or honey …

Her face burned when she realized she was staring and making a fool of herself. Casting a brief side glance at Kathy, she nearly groaned aloud at the look on her face that plainly said “you are _so_ gonna hear about this later.”

Instead, she said “Uuh, yeah,” in response to Al’s query. “Come in.”

With her permission, Al entered her room, followed closely by Edward. Ed didn’t have his contacts in either, and if Al’s amber eyes were gorgeous, then his were positively stunning. The piercing golden-yellow color was almost yellow enough to be ethereal, but just dark enough to still look naturally human. She didn’t freeze as long upon seeing the gold, however, as she had been expecting it after seeing Al without his contacts in.

Still … damn. The color must have looked even better with their natural blond, she couldn’t stop herself from thinking. Kai realized then that she and Kathy were still sitting on her rug. Making a motion to stand, she was halted by a dainty hand on her solid wrist.

“Why don’t they come over here?” Katherine asked loud enough that the boys could hear her. It was phrased as a question, but it was evidently not. “After all,” she continued, “they have some things to explain to _us_ , not the other way around.”

“But –” Kai tried protesting, but Kathy pulled her back down onto the green rug.

“Kai, it’s fine,” Al said as he took a seat beside Katherine. In order to complete the little circle, Ed was forced to sit between his brother and Kai, keeping him out of arms’ reach of Kathy. Smart, Kai realized. They wouldn’t be able to get anything done if Katherine and Edward were always at each other’s throats.

The four sat in uncomfortable silence for quite a while. Blue eyes met gold. Brown eyes met amber. Amber met gold, then blue. Gold met brown. At last, Katherine broke the awkward tension that had strung itself between them.

“How the _hell_ are you still alive?” she demanded of the two brothers, tactfully as always.

“Excuse me?” It was Edward who responded, confused.

“This article,” Kathy clarified, waving the sheets of paper she still had in her possession, “was written about two young men back in the 1920s. Are you not these boys?” When Ed and Al nodded, she carried on, “then how the hell are you still only sixteen or seventeen? It’s only been about, what, ninety years?”

“Give or take,” Ed muttered.

“Well,” Al started, “we don’t actually know … but we have a theory!” he exclaimed when Kathy glared at him.

“As far as we can tell,” Edward continued where his brother left off, “we haven’t aged a year past the age we were when we left Amestris – I was sixteen, and Al was fifteen. So, using some shaky calculations and some guesswork about biology … we’ve theorized that time passes a lot slower on the other side of the Gate than it does on this one. We have it pinned at – approximately – one year there for every hundred years that pass here.”

That … actually made sense. Kai did the more simplistic calculations in her head, and it all worked out. Of course, what were the chances that it would be exactly one per a hundred? What were the chances that they would land in the time period they did? What were the chances that any of all this was happening?

Infinity to one. And yet, it _was_ all happening. All of it.

“Okay,” Kathy admitted, “I’ll buy it. Now what have you been doing in the ninety-someodd years since you arrived here on this side of the Gate?”

“We’ve moved around a lot,” Edward answered, “not unlike how we lived in Amestris. The old man has gotten good at falsifying papers, which has helped. We started in Germany, then traveled around Europe for a while. We ended up in Japan, first Tokyo and then Hokkaido, where we practically signed our own death warrants … and then we moved to America. Started on the west coast, then made our way east to end up here.”

“And you can’t use alchemy on this side of the Gate?” Kai already knew the answer, but perhaps they had more information. There must have been something they overlooked, something they hadn’t thought of …

“What do you think?” the elder Elric asked bitterly, shaking his head.

“Sorry, Kai … alchemy is still kind of a sore subject,” Alphonse apologized. “We’ve tried everything we could think of – and that’s including some rather outrageous ideas. We’ve researched this world’s alchemy. We’ve translated the circle text into different languages. We’ve inverted the circles. We’ve rotated. We tried incorporating some of the symbols from your world. We’ve even tried jumping the reaction with electricity … nothing has worked.”

“No magic snake circle, then?”

“No, Kathy. There was no ‘magic snake circle.’ And we are _not_ related to that guy,” Edward said. “I don’t even know why Hiromi thought that was a good idea.”

“Hirom _i_?” Kai inquired.

“Hirom _u_ was Arakawa Hiromi’s penname,” Al clarified.

“Ah,” she said. There was a short pause, and then she continued with, “So Ling and Mei are real then, if most of the Brotherhood plots are the real ones, right?” It would be a shame if they weren’t. Ling has always been one of her favorite characters.

“Yeah, it’s true. And the bastard was just as much of a mooch as he is in that damn series.”

“Brother, no he wasn’t.”

“Yes, he was,” Edward insisted.

“And what about Mei, Al?” Kai asked, raising her eyebrows suggestively. In the series, there had been a strong suggestion of a pairing between the two, and she was curious. The Elric in question blushed madly at the insinuation.

“ _Kai!_ ” he exclaimed outrageously, “She was twelve!”

“And you were fifteen … that’s only three years’ difference,” Kathy pointed out.

After that, their serious conversation quickly dissolved into bouts of laughter at the indignation on Alphonse’s face. For that, Kai was grateful. It seemed Kathy had finally accepted that the Elrics were who they claimed to be – after all, Kai wouldn’t have gotten a response such as that one if ‘Al’ had only been pretending.

Kai thought to ask Ed about Winry, but decided not to. Even if there hadn’t been any romance between the alchemist and the mechanic, she had been a really good friend to both the boys. It seemed they still thought of her on a regular basis, if the picture in the locker was anything to go by. She didn’t want to depress them – not when everything was going so well.

The four of them eventually fall back into serious conversation, but it was with a much lighter attitude than the one they’d had before. By the end of the morning, Katherine and Edward had even negotiated somewhat of a peace treaty with one another. Marie brought snacks up, delighted to see her daughter laughing with friends other than Katherine for the first time in a long while.

Christopher even made an appearance, though the piercing yellow of the Elrics’ eyes reduced him to a shy mess once more. Once he realized they were the same people he had met the night before, he babbled on about this and that and the teens indulged him happily.

All in all, Kai swore it was the most fun she’d had in what seemed like forever. While the morning had started terribly, by noon it had become the best day she’d had in months. Her phone buzzed once – twice – three times in her pocket, and yet she ignored it.

“So … wait …” she said, suddenly thinking of something. Her three friends looked at her, and she backpedaled a bit in order to explain herself. “I was just thinking … if _you’re_ real, and _your_ story actually happened, and the manga is merely an adaption of that … does that mean _other_ supposedly ‘fictional’ characters could be real people too? I’m just wondering,” she added hastily.

Everyone thought about it for a few moments. The thought had truly never occurred to either of the boys, and Kathy was so new to this experience that she hadn’t even gotten past the _Elrics_ being real yet.

“I don’t know,” Alphonse said thoughtfully. “I guess it could be possible, couldn’t it, Brother?”

“JK Rowling,” Kathy stated with a sense of finality as she wrapped her brain around it. “If there were to be another ‘fictional’ series that actually took place, it would be Harry Potter. Just think about it – wizards don’t associate with muggles. It would be _so_ easy to keep it a secret. And Platform 9 ¾ doesn’t even exist – platforms nine and ten are on opposite sides of the track at King’s Cross. I would know – I’ve been there.”

Kai coughed rather conspicuously, disguising a word that could’ve been easily mistaken for ‘Potterhead.’ She received a glare for her efforts, but it was true that in her earlier years Katherine had been obsessed with JK Rowling’s work. Kai could still remember her best friend coming to her in tears when she didn’t get her Hogwarts letter on her eleventh birthday.

Still, she had a point. Thinking about it, Kai came to her own realization. “Supposing that the Wizarding World _was_ real, she could have been covering for a different station,” she surmised. “Actually, didn’t she say once that she hadn’t meant for it to be King’s Cross? Of course, obviously she wouldn’t give away the correct location – how many people would have gone searching for it?”

“Or King’s Cross could have changed since she wrote the book ... I think it has,” Katherine muttered, realizing the flaws in her logic. She sighed. “It isn’t like we’d ever get an answer, though,” she mused. “If we asked her, of course she’d say it was fictional.”

“Why do you think Hiromi keeps her life so private?” Alphonse asked, inserting himself into the conversation once more. “She’s doing what she can to protect us.”

“ _Protect_ you?” Katherine asked scathingly. “After publishing your lives for the whole world to know? Like, wow. Okay.”

“Hey,” Edward snapped, “don’t talk about her that way. She may have screwed up, but she’s still our friend.”

Kathy didn’t apologize – she never apologized for saying what she really thought – but she didn’t say anything more about Hiromi. Conversation did eventually fall back into its previous rhythm, due mostly to the awkward efforts put forth by Kai and Alphonse. Actually, despite the few snide comments between Katherine and Edward, the four of them got along surprisingly well. Even the comments eventually fell into jesting.

Originally, Kai had intended to have both Kathy and the Elrics over in order to straighten out some facts and convince her friend that she wasn’t crazy. That did happen, but in the end Edward and Alphonse stayed until mid-afternoon, and Katherine slept over into Sunday … causing Kai to be extremely tired during her gymnastics practice Sunday morning.

No one can avoid everything forever, though …

David confronted her after school on Monday.

* * *

“You’re kidding me,” Kai hissed at ‘Alan’ as they lingered in the Spanish room after the bell rang. “Really?”

‘Alan’ laughed heartily at the look on the girl’s face as she tried to process the information. “I swear I’m not making this up!” he exclaimed.

Kai shook her head slowly, unable to keep the grin off her face. “Idiot,” she said as she reached up to punch his arm lightly.

“Hey, what are you doing that for? It was Eric’s idea!”

“And you went along with it. Therefore, guilt by association.”

Kai usually hated Mondays. She usually hated Mondays with a burning, fiery passion that could only be quelled by the arrival of Tuesday. But this Monday … this Monday hadn’t been so bad. Sure, she’d missed school in order for gymnastics, and would thus have extra homework that night, but she’d finally nailed that one particularly tricky maneuver in her floor routine. Plus there was that whole new dynamic with the Elrics, with whom she shared most of her classes. It used to be she didn’t have any close friends in any of her classes, as Katherine had been her only friend for the longest time.

Having Eric and Alan as friends changed that, and it was fantastic. Edward’s snark in English was hilarious, and it was interesting the extra facts he’d mutter during Modern World – after all, he’d been alive for most of the topics they covered. Pre-calculus, her least-favorite class – save for the fact it was the only one she shared with Katherine – was now fantastic with the four of them there.

Four syllables broadsided her as she stepped outside the Spanish classroom, and suddenly this Monday was just as bad as all the rest of them. She recognized the timbre of that voice. It was the one that had been like the second half of her for almost four years … and it was the one she’d been hoping to avoid.

“Kai, can we talk?”

Looking back toward the sound of the voice, she found David leaning against the wall outside the door to the room. He’d been waiting for her, she realized. She’d forgotten he had seventh period off … damn. How long had he been standing there? How much of her discussion with Al had he heard? Her cheeks burned, even though she had nothing to be embarrassed about.

“Uhm, uh,” she stammered, “I have to, um, get the work from Mr. Lambden and Dr. Mason…”

David sighed heavily, running a hand back through his already-disheveled hair. “I know you’re trying to avoid me,” he said glumly, “and maybe I deserve that. Just … please. Five minutes?

Kai bit her lip, considering the boy in front of her. She didn’t want to talk to him. He had wronged her twice … maybe three times. She had been hoping if she left it alone, then they would come to the mutual decision to break up without ever exchanging words. It was a foolish desire.

She stood there, speechless for several seconds. David shifted uncomfortably, a wary look on his face. The air between them was thick with things unsaid. There was movement, and then a presence beside her whispered reassuringly.

“Talk to him,” Al told her. Kai whipped her head around to look at him, and he fixed his falsely blue eyes on hers with the look that said ‘I know what’s best.’ She’d imagined him using the look on Edward in the series, and she’d seen it just recently in real life, but she’d never imagined that it would ever be fixed upon her.

She broke her gaze from Alphonse, turning back to David. Taking a deep breath to prepare herself, she sighed heavily.

“Okay,” she said, walking over to her sort-of-ex boyfriend, who was now watching ‘Alan’ carefully. “I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s alright,” David assented, looking down at Kai before glancing back at ‘Alan.’ “I understand.”

The two walked down the hall in uncomfortable silence – a large divergence from the easy banter and friendly contact they’d had for years. With growing apprehension, Kai followed David into the school’s library. He made his way toward one of the secluded back tables, and she sat in the chair kitty-corner to the one he placed himself in.

Neither of them spoke as they watched the other with a mixture of fondness and other emotions. At last, David spoke.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know that doesn’t even begin to apologize for what a dick I’ve been …”

Kai didn’t say anything. She didn’t trust herself to speak without either ripping into him or bursting into tears. Her eyes caught a whorl in the tabletop, and she stared at it intently.

“Kai, sweets, please say something,” he pleaded her. “I can’t take this silence from you anymore.”

“Why?” she finally asked. “Why did you do it?”

David sighed heavily, burying his head in his hands before looking back up at her. “It’s stupid,” he said. “I’ve been going to parties, because I never see you anymore. I was drunk,” he admitted, “and I know that really doesn’t absolve me of anything, but I swear they both came on to me, never the other way around.”

She tore her gaze from the imperfection in the wood to search for any sign he was lying. When he looked as if he was telling the utmost truth, she dropped her eyes once more.  Worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, she considered what he had just said. He had been drunk? And they came on to him? It shouldn’t have changed anything. It _really_ shouldn’t have changed anything. And yet … it had, just a little bit. Suddenly, she felt a little more open to hearing what he had to say.

“In my defense,” he continued awkwardly in light of her silence, “I tried to let go, but … I mean, I wished they were you. I wanted it to _be_ you. Even subconsciously …”

Elizabeth Carson. Tall, blonde hair and blue eyes. Ashley Anderson. Shorter, with brunette hair and blue eyes. Neither of them were her double, but they shared physical traits similar to her own. To a drunken mind … no. She had to stay firm in her resolve. She _had_ to.

“And what about Olivia?” she asked, searching desperately for something to hold against him.

“What about Olivia?” he asked, confused.

“Olivia Hart … I saw you with her by her locker the other day,” she explained quietly.

“Kai, I swear. We were talking about the results for the physics test when the bell rang, and we hadn’t finished.”

So it hadn’t been three times. It had only been two, if he could be believed. And, in the four years they’d been together, David had never lied to her about anything other than what they were doing on a date or what he’d gotten her for her birthday. He hadn’t even lied to her about trying cigarettes those couple times. True, he hadn’t told her about Ashley Anderson … but he hadn’t lied about or denied it, either.

“I – I don’t know, David. I want to stay together, really. But … can we even fix this?”

God, she felt terrible. This was what he’d wanted to say since that one day? If only she’d listened to him then, she could’ve avoided these weeks of avoiding him. It was obvious that he was hurt just as much by his actions as she was, and he had been additionally hurt by her shutting him down and ignoring his texts. They were both in the wrong, and they were both in the right … if that made any sense.

“I’m gonna stop going to the parties,” David said. “I thought I had learned my lesson the first time, and that it wouldn’t happen again … and then it did. I am so, so sorry.”

He hadn’t mentioned anything about it being her fault due to the fact she never had any time for him. Really, she couldn’t help but feel that she didn’t deserve the wonderful person in front of her. The more he spoke, the worse she felt about her actions throughout the months prior.

“Kai,” he said earnestly, and she looked up at his tone. “I don’t … I don’t want to be unfair to you. Can we take the summer off? You’re going to be gone, anyway, and I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep.”

At the indignant look spreading across her face, he rushed to explain himself.

“I’m not saying I’m going to sleep with anyone else!” he exclaimed, “I just don’t want to hurt you even more if I make any more stupid mistakes. If anything, y’know … _happens_ , then I’m going to call it off then, because you don’t deserve that.”

It was tough for him to say the words, she could tell. And it hurt, to hear her boyfriend asking for a break from the relationship, but she understood the logic behind where he was coming from. She resolved then and there that she would be better about making time in her schedule. After all, he couldn’t be the only one making concessions.

Kathy wouldn’t understand this, she realized. She would try to, of course, for her best friend, but … Kathy wasn’t one who forgave easily. Especially for something like this. But … Kai felt that this wouldn’t be a mistake, if she gave herself and David Rowell one more chance.

She nodded, sealing the deal. “Okay,” she said. “I’m going to try harder too,” she told him. After a moment’s consideration, she took one of the hands that was still resting on the table in her own – the first contact between them in weeks.

The grin that splashed itself across his face was almost worth all the pain she’d gone through. _There_ was the David that she remembered. It wasn’t long after that she felt herself being pulled up out of her chair and into a large hug. There was still a lot they needed to work through – and she knew that – but for that moment she just enjoyed being in his arms once more.

She’d missed that more than she’d ever let on to anyone.

And when he kissed her, it wasn’t the bittersweet goodbye kiss she’d imagined whenever she’d thought about their inevitable conversation. It wasn’t the passionate kiss of reunited lovers. It wasn’t even anything particularly memorable.

It was a simple ‘see you later,’ which she returned gladly. She wasn’t over the whole debacle – she wouldn’t be for a while, but she felt for the first time that they would be able to work their way through it together. There were only two weeks left of school, and then she’d be in California the whole summer. When she returned, maybe – just maybe – everything would be right between them again.

Even long after they’d split ways, she couldn’t keep the ecstatic beam off her face for the rest of the day.


	11. Monday, June 24 - Tuesday, June 25

“Heeey soul sista’, ain’t that mista’ mista’ on the raaadio. Stereo. The way you move ain’t fair, you know!”

The song blasted from the car stereo; the volume was turned up as loud as it could be without hurting Christopher’s ears. It was Monday, June 24, and the Dallas-family-plus-Katherine had just spent eight hours travelling. After six hours of flying plus at least a good two more at various airports, the end was just now in sight. It would be another fifty minutes before they reached Kai’s father’s apartment, but they were in California at long last.

“Just! In! Tiiiiii-iime … I’m so glad you have a one-track mind like me-e. You gave my life direction – a game show love connection. We can’t de-ny. I- I-I-I-I …”

Robert had met his family and Kathy at the baggage claim, carrying one of those signs that were always seen in the movies as if the extra identification had been needed. The small cry that Kai had let escape at the sight of her father had been slightly juvenile for a girl who had turned seventeen just the week before, but Kathy knew her friend couldn’t have cared less as she hit him at a stride that was only just slower than a run. The man had nearly dropped the sign as he was hugged tightly, but he soon returned the embrace just as strongly as he could.

Truthfully, all Kathy could remember of the time between arriving at San Francisco International Airport and climbing into Robert’s car was a mess of smiles and some happy tears. There had also been some questionable PDA between Kai’s parents, but she was actually _trying_ to forget that part. She supposed it didn’t matter much – in the grand scheme of things, the time spent at the airport wasn’t too important, at least not for her. Sure, she loved seeing her second family reunited … but she hated being the one to stand around awkwardly.

Katherine Greene didn’t _do_ awkward.

Things started looking up once they were on the road. Robert had told the girls to choose the music for the hour-long drive to his place in Livermore, and Kathy would be lying if she said she hadn’t squealed at the sight of Train on the man’s iPod. It was only, like, her favorite band ever.

“Like a virgin, you’re Madonna, and I’m al-ways gonna waaaanna blow your miiiiinnnd,” the girls caterwauled.

Neither of them was a very good singer. Luckily, they weren’t completely tone-deaf and therefore could somewhat carry a tune while they sang along to the song itself. In the front seats, Marie laughed while Robert joined the girls in the chorus. Christopher didn’t know enough of what was going on to participate, but giggled gaily. The joyous energy within the car was clearly affecting him as well.

Just then, Kai’s father made a sharp turn and accelerated onto the Officer David Chetcuti Memorial Highway – quite a mouthful, in Kathy’s opinion – and Kai fell into her due to the centripetal force. Both girls laughed as Kathy dug her skinny tanned elbow into her friend’s firm side to push her off. For a girl that was only four feet and eleven inches tall, Kai was _heavy_.

The song ended as they righted themselves, and Kathy made sure she was the first one to the iPod. Her extra height and the length of her arms gave her the advantage, and so she gained possession quite easily. “Hah,” she laughed into the blonde’s pouty face. There usually would have been a ‘bitch’ woven into that crow of victory, but with Christopher in the car, she figured Kai’s parents wouldn’t be too happy with her.

When Kai realized what song Kathy had put on in place of whatever should have been next, she laughed maniacally. This one was a particular favorite. Although Kai wasn’t a huge fan of Train, she had learned to appreciate a few of their songs. _Soul Sister_ was one of those that she enjoyed, and Kathy knew which other ones they could rock to.

“My heart is paralyyyzed, my head was oversiiized … I’ll take the high road like I shooould,” the dark-skinned girl crooned in the direction of her best friend. It wasn’t long before Kai’s voice joined hers, singing just as enthusiastically. They danced just as much as their seatbelts allowed, not caring about the spectacle they were probably – no, most definitely – making of themselves.

“She went down in an air-plane, fried getting sun-tanned … fell in a cee-ment. Mix-er full of quicksand!” they sang vindictively.

Eventually, they were half-shouting the lyrics rather than singing them. After all, what good is a breakup song if it can’t be sung without a little resentment? Halfway through the song, they replaced all the pronouns so that it was _he_ who got run over by the crappy purple Scion. And as much as Kai insisted that she’d forgiven David completely, the amount of emotion she put into the lyrics led Kathy to believe otherwise.

She still wanted to kick the boy’s ass into the next century for the pain he had caused Kai. She needed someone to blame for all the stress her friend had been under recently, and he was the only one that she could find entirely at fault. The Elrics hadn’t helped matters at all – _that_ whole snafu was an entirely _different_ story – but it was hardly their fault. They hadn’t known that Kai would discover their identities. Marie could be blamed a little, as she was the one who insisted that Kai do so well in school, but there was good reason behind that. Other than that, there was only Kai herself to blame. Kathy had been trying to get her to relax for years.

But David? The bastard didn’t _have_ to go and get drunk – twice – and _cheat_ on her best friend – _twice_. She honestly couldn’t believe that he’d gone crawling back to her the way he did. She could understand Kai taking him back – the girl had never been strong in her resolve, always trying to please others. Kathy knew David knew this about Kai as well, and she was of the strong opinion that he was using that to his advantage.

She wouldn’t tell Kai what to do with her life, though. Although her resolve was weak, Kai was a strong person underneath it all. She had proven it time and time again throughout the years they had known each other – which was quite a few. How else would she be able to juggle her life the way she did? How else would she have been able to face the issue of her wayward boyfriend with a level head?

How else could she have learned about and handled the situation with the Elrics without losing it completely?

Now that … _that_ was the big question.

Even now – over two weeks since the big reveal – Kathy had difficulty believing everything that had happened. It was just impossible … wasn’t it? Every morning she woke up expecting to learn that everything had just been a dream or a really, really bad joke. She half-expected someone to jump out of hiding, screaming “You’ve been Punk’d!”

But they never did.

If someone asked her how she would have handled the situation if she had been in her friend’s place, she wouldn’t have an answer for them. She’d tried to think about it – really, she had. But given the circumstances under which the events had unfolded, she honestly couldn’t think of alternate scenarios. She could guarantee, though, that she wouldn’t have handled it as well as Kai had. If it had been she who had confronted them about it, they probably would have moved away, as it seemed they usually did.

She still thought Edward was an ass. She could tolerate him now, though, after seeing the side of him that wasn’t a complete asshole trying to distance people – and she could tell why he had been such an asshole to everyone – but his natural personality still made him a bit of an ass … sometimes. She had even told him as much, and he had laughed.

“Well, you’re just rude,” he had responded in kind.

Needless to say, engineering class was much more entertaining than it had been a week prior to the incident.

But she could see what perhaps Kai couldn’t. At least, if Kai did see it, she had chosen to disregard it for the time being. Things were all well and good now, but it would only be a few years before it became noticeable that Elrics didn’t age. Any way Kathy looked at it, it could only be a temporary friendship. Eventually, both she and Kai would be way older than either of them, and both they and the boys would have long since moved on. Perhaps someone else would discover their secret, and Kai would be forgotten. Or, if they were lucky, the boys would find their way home. In any case … nothing was forever. Especially not this.

Watching the blonde beside her, though, smiling down at her phone because of some text that was either from an Elric or David … Kathy was willing to push her misgivings aside. She would be there for the fallout, rest assured, and everything would be okay. She, at least, wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

 “I’ve been high! I’ve been low! I’ve been yes, and I’ve been oh. Hell. No …”

* * *

There was one tiny detail Kai always managed to forget in the months she spent on the east coast.

California was _hot_.

“Oh, my god.”

After spending the last few hours at the Livermore Premium Outlets with Kathy, Kai wanted nothing more than to collapse into a puddle of goo for the rest of the day. ‘Shopping’ and ‘Kathy’ were two words that should never be heard in a sentence together, as they were an extremely volatile mix. The two had not been accompanied by either of Kai’s parents, which had been fantastic … but it also meant that Kai had been driving. It hadn’t been too bad – she drove in Boston on a fairly regular basis, after all – but driving in unfamiliar territory was exhausting. Shopping with Kathy was exhausting in general. Even back home, Kai dreaded their mall trips just as much as she looked forward to them.

“Hey, Kai?” Kathy’s voice rang clearly through the wooden door that separated the bathroom from the bedroom the two were staying in. The girls were lucky they were such good friends – it was obvious that there wouldn’t be much in the way of privacy for the next three weeks. In the small two-bedroom two-bathroom apartment that Robert lived in, there wasn’t much space for five people. The girls had a room to themselves, luckily, and Christopher would be sleeping in the master bedroom with his parents.

“Yeah, Kath?” Kai yelled back, not looking up from the book she was reading in the prime position right in front of the air conditioner.

“How the fuck do you operate this stupid shower?” There was a strong nuance of irritation in the girl’s voice, and through the door Kai then heard a muffled “Jesus _Christ_ , that’s cold.”

Finally looking up from her book, she took a second to remember how the shower actually worked. It had been a year since she had last used it, after all. “Press the button-thing up top, then turn the knob … right? I think?”

There was a minute’s pause which she assumed was Kathy waiting to see whether the water would actually heat up. It wasn’t long before there was a “thanks!” being yelled through the door. Smiling to herself, Kai turned her attention back to the book she had picked up in Boston’s Logan airport.

She actually didn’t really like it. She had picked it up on a whim as they wandered through the small bookstore, passing the time before they boarded their flight. When she had showed it to Kathy, the other girl had laughed.

“ _The Alchemyst._ Oh, that’s just perfect. You’ve _got_ to send a picture of that to Ed and Al,” she’d said.

Kai had heard of the series _The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel_ before, but had never read any of the books until now. It was … decent … but after learning that alchemy did in fact exist, she kept comparing the alchemy in the book to that in FMA. The plot was getting confusing as well, as there were new characters and magics and Kai just couldn’t keep them straight.

Still, she was nearly finished after six hours invested in it on the plane the day previous. She felt that she couldn’t just abandon it, and so she was desperately trying to finish it instead. There were only a couple chapters left, and she was glad she was drawing close to the end.

Glancing at her phone, she considered texting David. It was only … what … ten o’ clock over there right now? Counting it off on her fingers, she confirmed that her mental math had been correct. But … she’d been texting him earlier that day, and he still hadn’t responded to the last text she’d sent. She didn’t want to seem needy or clingy by texting him again so soon …

Instead, she checked what the actual time was before turning back to her book. After reading the first three sentences several times over, however, she gave up. The book had lost her interest, at least for the time being. She’d finish it after dinner or something. Tossing it carelessly beside her, she drew her knees up and let her head fall back to rest against the wall.

She wished Kathy would hurry up. While she had been extremely grateful for the air conditioning shortly after their return from the outdoor mall, her sweat had since dried and she was now freezing. Rubbing her arms vigorously in an attempt to restore some warmth, she then tucked her hands underneath her armpits as she stood to move away from the air conditioner.

Deciding that Kathy would still be at least another fifteen minutes in the shower, she left the guest bedroom to find the rest of her family.

Things hadn’t changed much in her father’s apartment in the year she had been absent – it was still small. Of course, it was the perfect size for a thirty-five-year-old man who lived alone for most of the year, but it didn’t work too well when there were five people trying to coexist on top of one another. The small living room was the same as always, Kai noted, though the furniture had been shifted just a little bit. The bookshelf was where it always had been, and Kai ran her finger along the spines of the various manga her father owned.

A corner of her mouth quirked up in a smile as she realized she finally knew where to place the blame for the entire Elric fiasco – it was all her _father’s_ fault. If he hadn’t handed her the first FMA volume when she was thirteen and complaining of boredom in his small apartment, then she probably would have never gotten into anime and manga. She could have then avoided the plethora of other problems that had since arisen.

“Penny for your thoughts?”

The sound of her father’s voice behind her caused her to jump, and she spun to face him. Seconds later, she was looking into a familiar sandy-haired, hazel-eyed face.

“Jeezum _crow_ ,” she swore, pressing a hand to her heart. “Don’t _do_ that!”

“Sorry,” Robert Dallas apologized. Peering past her at the bookshelf, he smiled. “It does bring back memories, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah …”

She turned back to the shelf of manga and smiled, remembering the visit in her fourteenth year. Her mother had been pregnant with Christopher at the time, and had fallen asleep on the couch in the small living room. Kai and her father had grabbed a couple FMA books off the shelf and some paper out of the printer and stolen away to the master bedroom together. There, they had spent the next couple hours sitting on the large bed re-drawing the pictures out of the books.

Neither of them had a large amount of artistic talent, which had only added to the amount of fun they’d had. Marie had woken to peals of laughter, and when she went to investigate she had found her husband and her daughter in tears over a horrifically drawn Alphonse.

“Spikey metal unicorn,” Kai said offhandedly, glancing back at her father. He was, of course, the artist of said masterpiece.

“Oh, be quiet,” Robert scoffed. “I’ve gotten better since then.”

It was then that Kai noticed it was remarkably quiet in the apartment given the fact there were supposedly five people in the 890 square feet of space. Looking around confusedly, she asked her father about it.

“Your mother took Christopher with her out to the supermarket,” was the answer she received. “They left as soon as you and Kathy got back from the Outlets … apparently it’s surprising that I don’t have enough food in my refrigerator for five people.”

“Ah,” was Kai’s response.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she said. “I just – nothing.”

For a split second, she considered telling her father the truth behind FMA.  She knew he would find out at some point – with three people within the apartment knowing the secret, it was impossible that he _wouldn’t_ find out. The sentence had even formed itself in the back of her throat, but she had chickened out. This was the first time she had seen her father in person in over a year – she didn’t want the Elrics looming over the entirety of her summer like, well … like a giant grey gate.

“Okay,” Robert accepted. “But you can tell me anything … you know that, right?”

“Yeah,” she acknowledged. “I know, Dad.”

There was a slightly awkward silence, and Kai pursed her lips. Running her gaze across the line of FMA volumes on the shelf in an attempt to avoid her father’s gaze, an idea popped into her head. She knew how to fix this problem, and it was actually a lot simpler than one would believe.

“Hey, want to watch an episode or two of FMA?”

If Robert accepted, then perhaps she could get some research done at the same time. True, reading Ed and Al’s scientific tomes had only given her headaches, but perhaps there were simpler ways to find the same information she’d need. The number of times Edward had told her to just give up when she questioned them about alchemy hadn’t yet deterred her from attempting to find a solution. There had to be a way. What goes up must come down, right?

“Original or Brotherhood?”

“Uhm …” Kai hemmed and hawed. She knew her father preferred the original anime, as that was the one he had gotten into the series with, but she preferred Brotherhood herself for the same reason. Eventually, she decided that Brotherhood would be the better series to watch considering her motives, as that was the one that was based off the story that was based off her friends’ lives.

It was a shock at first, to see her Edward’s blond likeness on the screen in front of her. Not for the first time, she wondered how she had missed it when she had first met him. The voice coming from the character on the screen was wrong though, which was just weird. Sure, it held the same combination of laziness and cockiness that she had grown accustomed to hearing, but it was too … high? She didn’t know if that was right, but didn’t know how else to describe it.

It was even harder to see Alphonse as the Al she knew. For one thing, he was no longer a seven-foot-tall suit of armor. For another, his voice in real life was much deeper than in the anime … though it still held the gentle nuances the show portrayed.

“Is something the matter?” her father suddenly inquired, “You have an odd frown on your face.”

“What? Oh, no. Sorry … it’s been a while since I’ve watched the anime. It just sounds different then I remember,” she responded evasively. It wasn’t lying – not completely.

After thinking about it for weeks, Kai had finally googled the list of episodes during the layover in Chicago in an attempt to find the ones that might help her help her friends. After careful consideration, she had decided to begin with episode twenty-six: _Reunion_. It was the episode in which Edward had ended up in much the same situation as he was in now, trapped in an alternate dimension after being eaten by Gluttony. If any of the Elrics’ past experiences could help them, she believed it would be this one.

Of course, she realized, it would only help her if it was a part of the anime that was actually accurate. Biting her lip in trepidation, she pulled her phone out briefly and dashed a text off to Edward, asking confirmation before turning her full attention back on the episode. A couple minutes later, her phone buzzed with a response and she nearly dropped it in her haste to read the text.

_Eric Cirle_  
Its accurate. At least, the events are. The  
circle is fake.

A moment later, a second message appeared on the screen.

_Eric Cirle_  
We’ve already made that connection, K. We  
tried it. You’re just wasting your time …

_Kai Dallas  
_ I don’t care. I’m gonna try. 

It buzzed once more after that, but Kai ignored it. The more Edward told her it was impossible, the more she wanted to prove him wrong. She knew deep inside that the likelihood that she could accomplish what the experienced century-old alchemists couldn’t was extremely miniscule … but it at least made her feel that she wasn’t entirely useless. That she really _was_ different from all the others the Elrics had met in their multiple lifetimes on this side of the Gate. That maybe if she was helpful in a way no one else had been, then they wouldn’t abandon her as she was sure they had done to many others like her.

So absorbed was Kai in her own insecurities and the episode, she didn’t even notice when Kathy exited the guest room in search of her. In fact, it was only once the darker-skinned girl collapsed onto the end of the couch that Kai realized she was there.

To her surprise, Kathy sat through the rest of the episode with them. When asked about it afterwards, the taller girl shrugged. “What? Did you think I wouldn’t help?” she asked, her tone vitriolic. “I’m not going to be the fucking tagalong, you know. I’m friends with them too, and it’s not fair if you get to have all the fun, bitch.”

* * *

**_B-B-B-Be careful making wishes in the dark, dark  
Can't be sure when they've hit their mark …_ **

* * *

Kai was extremely preoccupied with thoughts about alchemy throughout the rest of the day. During dinner, she had been unusually inattentive – to everyone’s bafflement but Kathy’s. In an attempt to distract herself, she finally left the table to take her much-needed shower. Her sweat had long since dried on her skin, and it gave her a most uncomfortable feeling. It was one of those things that bothered her, even after years of gymnastics in a gym that sometimes grew to be a sauna in the summer. She suffered through it in school due to the fact she didn’t have enough time to shower before she needed to be back in class, but she still hated it.

Oh, that reminded her. She needed to check in with the California Gymnastics Academy to confirm their hours and make sure she was still allowed to practice there. Considering she had a competition coming up in a few weeks, and she would be in California for most of the summer… she couldn’t slack off on her training. She groaned aloud at the thought that the CGA could be hotter than the GAB back home, then hoped beyond hope that the air conditioner there actually worked.

As the spray of water cascaded down her back, she gave up and let her mind wander back to where it wanted to be – alchemy. There had to be a way, she reiterated to herself for the hundredth time, they just hadn’t found it yet. Taking a deep breath, she began trying to sort her jumbled thoughts into semi-coherent lists.

_What she knew:_

\- Alchemy was real  
\- Alchemy didn’t seem to work on this side  
\- The Elrics had supposedly tried everything  
\- Edward had gotten out of a similar situation before  
\- She was crazy 

_What she could theorize:_

\- People on this side didn’t have a Gate  
\- This side of the Gate didn’t have the power to do alchemy  
\- The Elrics didn’t have the right array  
\- Alchemy was actually impossible on this side  
\- Both Elrics had lost their alchemical abilities when passing over without knowing  
\- There was something everyone had missed  
\- She might be crazy

_What she didn’t know:_

\- Exactly how alchemy worked  
\- Why alchemy didn’t work on this side  
\- What the Elrics hadn’t tried  
\- Basically everything about the situation  
\- If she wasn’t crazy

Sighing heavily, Kai tried to go through and eliminate some possibilities from her lists. The problem was that she actually knew so little about everything that _any_ of her theories could be correct. There was nothing she could do to invalidate any of them. Unable to keep the lists straight in her mind, she let them dissipate into nothingness once more.

Already close to being fed up with the entire situation, she hastily drew an extremely lopsided transmutation circle in her frustration. Laughing at the pathetic scribble upon the glass shower door, she resisted the urge to wipe it out with one swipe of her hand. She couldn’t spend her entire summer hung up on something that would most likely never happen. She had her internship starting on July eighth, plus gymnastics. Along with that, she and her father were going to go college touring later that summer.

Kai was really hoping to get into a Californian college. As much as she complained about it, she loved it on the west coast. In addition, it would mean she could spend more time with her father. Marie had talked about it with her, and they both agreed it would be a good move.

So yeah. There was also that. Maybe … maybe she should just give up on getting the Elrics home, at least for this summer. She had the rest of her life – nothing said she needed to solve the problem _now_.

But she wished she could.

After spending the better part of half an hour standing lazily under the spray of water, she quickly shampooed and washed and got out. She changed straight into her pajamas, as she figured that she wouldn’t be leaving the apartment again that evening. Briefly towel-drying her hair before running a brush though it, she stared into the small mirror with a sigh.

Who was she kidding? She wasn’t an alchemist. She wasn’t a century old, or a homunculus, or a military general. She wasn’t an automail mechanic, or a doctor, or a super genius. She wasn’t spectacular. She was a short, seventeen-year-old girl with too much on her plate and a couple red spots on her face. How could that even begin to compare?

Turning away from the mirror dejectedly in order to put the towel back on the rack, she paused when something caught her eye. That something was a sloppily drawn transmutation circle in the condensation on the other side of the glass. Hadn’t … hadn’t that really pointy side of the circle been on the upper left before? Looking at it from this direction, it was most definitely on the right.

It was then that the smallest of ideas began to bury itself into the back of her mind. Sacrificing her dry feet, she stepped into the shower once more.

Left.

She stepped back out.

Right.

Left.

Right.

Left …

Right …

Okay.

So, she thought slowly as she tried to form her suspicions into coherent thoughts, the bathroom … is here. This side. Inside the shower is Amestris, and the door is the Gate. In Amestris, you see the left-pointed circle. Here, you see the right … but what does that have to do with anything?

She was so confused. She felt like she had just stumbled across something important, but she couldn’t piece it all together. She wondered if this was how Ed and Al had felt as they were unraveling the Conspiracy.

Just what did it mean?

Left. Amestris.

Right. This world.

Left.

Right …

Left.

Left.

Left.

_Left_.


	12. Wednesday, June 26 (2013)

It is pretty safe to say that everyone has done a jigsaw puzzle at least once in their lifetime. If not, then that they at least know what a jigsaw puzzle is and how it fits together. Therefore, everyone would understand the analogy that likened the way things came together to a jigsaw puzzle.

At first, nothing seemed to work. There were so many pieces, and nobody knew where to start as the bits all lay jumbled in a giant pile on the living room floor. Then, somebody found the corner pieces. After that, it wasn’t long before the frame was built and the rest of the puzzle was filled in. The more pieces that were placed, the quicker the following pieces were fit together, until finally the entire picture could be seen.

And the other thing about jigsaw puzzles? They go a lot faster with multiple people working on them …

* * *

**I’m coming apart at the seams  
Pitching myself for leads in other people’s dreams**

* * *

“Okay, so get this,” Kai said eagerly, uncapping the magic marker she held in her left hand. After thinking about the Shower Incident for the entirety of the night before, she was excited to finally have the chance to tell Kathy about her discovery. Her parents were out and Christopher was taking an impromptu morning nap in the girls’ room after they had worn him out. Now she stood inside the shower – fully clothed – while Kathy stared at her through the fogged glass with a look of interest on her face.

“So what’s this about?” the taller girl asked, folding her arms across her chest. To her credit, she managed to keep the skepticism off her face as her friend scrawled an extremely lopsided circle onto the glass in purple ink. As Kai added a hexagon, spokes, and circles in order to make the egg shape look more like a transmutation circle, comprehension dawned on her dark complexion.

“A circle?” she asked, even though it was quite obvious. “Kai … you know it can’t be that easy … the ‘doodle a transmutation circle’ thing only works in fan fiction.”

The girl inside the shower shot her friend a look through the glass as she paused in her scribbling. “You’ve read fan fiction?” That didn’t sound like something Kathy would do at all. Actually, it sounded like something her ninth grade self would do. It was something her ninth-grade self had _done_. But eleventh-almost-twelfth grade Kathy? Never.

“Fuck off,” Kathy grumbled, clearly uncomfortable. “I thought it could help us, okay? Anyway, that’s not the point! What _are_ you doing?”

Although Kai still longed to pester her friend about her apparent fan fiction habit, she shook off the urge and turned back to the figure she had drawn on the shower door for a second time. Re-capping the marker, she dropped it to the ground carelessly, where it clattered loudly. Taking a deep breath, Kai then attempted to sort her thoughts into some sort of order before she began speaking.

“Which side is pointier to you?” she asked her friend. Her voice echoed in the small chamber, and in that moment she felt extremely foolish. She only hoped that her new theory would actually pan out.

“What _side_?” Kathy was confused, not that Kai could blame her

“Yeah,” she clarified, “the right or the left?”

She thought it should have been pretty clear. She had purposely drawn the egg lying on its side, emphasizing the difference in thickness. Luckily, it wasn’t long until Kathy caught on.

“Oh!” She exclaimed. “Okay. I see it now, yeah. It kind of tapers off on the right side – is that what you meant?”

Kai nodded. That was indeed what she had been trying to get Kathy to see. “Yeah,” she confirmed in a light tone before continuing, “but when _I_ look at it, it tapers off to the left.”

“And?”

“Don’t you see? _I’m_ in Amestris, _you’re_ in our world –”

“– and the shower door is the Gate,” Kathy finished, seeing what Kai was getting at. “I’m seeing the transmutation circle backwards.”

“Yes!” Kai cried happily, the outburst echoing in the small bathroom. “It has to mean something, doesn’t it?” She grabbed the marker and stepped out of the shower to join Kathy, turning to observe the circle from the other side.

“Yeah,” Kathy mused, tracing the outside of the circle with her index finger. “It should, but … Kai … we have no _fucking_ idea about any of this shit. It could mean absolutely squat, and we could be on a wild goose chase. We just have no way of knowing!”

“But it’s something,” Kai persisted, “which is more than we had before. Come on, Kathy. Can you even imagine it? Seventeen years old for almost a century … I know I can’t.”

 “Jesus, Kai. I already said I’d help you – I didn’t need a fucking guilt trip,” Kathy snapped. “At least you’re not madly in love with either of them,” she added as the two of them exited the bathroom back into the guest room. They left the transmutation circle where it was – it wouldn’t hurt anyone, and the girls were the only ones that used that bathroom. Besides, it would disappear the next time one of them had a shower.

“Why do you say that?”

“Well, a) because you still have a boyfriend, and b) because then it would be waay too much like _Twilight_ all up in here.”

“You read each of those books like, five times in middle school – don’t even lie.”

“I –” Kathy started, but trailed off. “That doesn’t even matter now,” she muttered.

They both quieted their voices as they closed the bathroom door behind them. Christopher was still sleeping – quite peacefully by the looks of it – and neither of them wanted to wake him. The room was a mess, however, and Kai bent to pick up some of the papers that lay scattered by her feet.

The three of them had started the morning with coloring and drawing, but the quiet activity had eventually devolved into something of a tickle fight. Due to that, the papers and writing utensils were strewn all across the floor. Hopefully Christopher would wake before their parents returned, so the three of them could get the room back to the way it was.

It was easy to tell who had drawn what. Kathy was the real artist of the group, while Kai could draw something recognizable and Christopher’s papers were covered mainly in colorful scribbles. Scanning the room, Kai was glad to see that the fairy picture Kathy had drawn for her brother had escaped destruction. Maggie was still hung up on fairies, and therefore Christopher was too. He had practically begged Kathy to draw him a picture to give to her.

Kathy, of course, had obliged him.

Silently snagging the picture off the floor, Kai followed Katherine out of the bedroom. Behind them, the three-year-old still slept soundly.

“So,” Kathy said once the door was closed behind them, “what now? _Fullmetal Alchemist_ marathon?”

Just hearing her best friend speak the words caused Kai’s heart to fill with joy. Before the whole thing with Ed and Al, Kathy had never shown any interest in manga or anime whatsoever. She had put up with Kai’s former obsession, but had drawn the line at reading a chapter or watching an episode. Now, it seemed, everything was changing.

Thinking for a moment, Kai grinned as she thought of something. “What if,” she began slowly, “we watched a few episodes of FMA:O while we flipped through the manga? Because things are very different between them – by only reading the manga or watching FMA:B, we could miss some vital information.”

‘Vital information.’ She was talking as if they were actually going to figure everything out. As if they were actually going to get the Elrics home in a couple weeks, whereas the boys themselves had spent ninety years trying to do just that. She was talking crazy, and she knew it. Kathy knew it. Her mum didn’t know it because Kai hadn’t informed her of ‘the plan.’ Her father didn’t know it because he didn’t even know about the Elrics. Christopher didn’t know it because he was three, but she was crazy.

She was talking crazy, and yet they did what she had suggested. Turning the television on and finding the Original Anime on Netflix because they were too lazy to search for her father’s DVD set, they grabbed a couple volumes of the manga off the shelf and settled in for a long day of ‘research.’

* * *

“KaiKai?”

Several hours later, the sound of her brother’s voice brought Kai out of the haze of alchemy she had fallen under. Beside her, Kathy looked up from where she had been jotting down probably pointless notes. Turning on the couch so that she could see her little brother, Kai smiled.

“Hey, bud,” she said. “Did you have a nice nap?”

“Yeah,” the blonde three-year-old said. “KaiKai, I’m hungry.”

Oh yeah, it was about lunchtime, most likely. What time _was_ it, anyway? Pulling her phone from her pocket, Kai hastily checked the time for the first time in hours. When she saw the numbers, she had to do a double take … was it really three o’ clock already? No wonder Christopher was hungry – lunch should have been at least two hours ago!

Tossing the FMA volume in her hands onto the coffee table, she pushed herself from the couch. Upon standing, it became quite obvious that she hadn’t moved in hours as she stumbled a few steps before catching her balance once more. Kathy stood as well and followed her into the kitchen area, albeit a bit more gracefully.

Completely uninspired, Kai threw together three bowls of Easy-Mac as Kathy and Christopher messed about at the dining table. It was her personal belief that one was never too old for macaroni and cheese, and that one could never go wrong with it. Together, the three under-eighteens ate their meal in practical silence. Christopher babbled on about this and that, but both the girls were still absorbed in the task they had set themselves.

“Do you … do you think we can actually do this?” Kai finally asked, breaking the silence between them.

“Kaigirl, honestly? I have no fu- _frickin’_ idea. I mean, it does seem impossible. The odds are against us … but it seems we eat impossible for breakfast now, so I really can’t say one way or the other.”

Kai couldn’t remember when it had become a mutual decision to get the Elrics home. She hadn’t said anything to Kathy about her plans, thinking her friend would surely think her insane. She’d told her about that one time she went over to the Elrics’ place after school … but that had been the only time. And yet, it seemed that Kathy was just as on board with getting the boys home as she was. At least, she had said she wasn’t going to take the back burner … and that was so incredibly Kathy.

* * *

Despite their best efforts, the girls didn’t get much more accomplished that day. By the time Kai’s parents returned, both Kai and Kathy had pages upon pages of random, insignificant notes. Almost all the manga books had at least one neon pink sticky note peeking from their pages, if not more. The coffee table was a mess. Kathy’s long black tresses were disheveled from having frustrated fingers worked through them so many times, and Kai’s shorter blonde hair had been slung up in a sloppy bun to keep it out of her face. Christopher was still with them, settled on the couch and entertained by the anime that continued to play in the background.

When Robert and Marie had returned later that afternoon, not a word had been spoken about the mess. Kai didn’t know whether her mother had told her father about what had gone down in Somerville. She had tried her best to read her father’s facial features, but it was not a skill she was particularly adept in. After responding to Christopher’s enthusiastic greeting and the girls’ absent-minded ones, they had disappeared … and there weren’t that many places one could disappear to in the small apartment. Kai didn’t want to think about it.

Moving on.

She and Kathy had tried. They had tried so hard without getting anywhere, but Kai wasn’t completely discouraged. Lying on her bed that night while waiting for Katherine to be done in the bathroom, she _knew_ it had only been one day. Still, after the flipped transmutation circle realization, she had been hoping things would continue to fall into place. She should have known she wouldn’t have that much luck.

There had to be something, though. Even in the series, there was always a way. Edward and Alphonse had refused to think it was impossible to get their bodies back without a Philosopher’s Stone, and it hadn’t been. It had supposedly been impossible to create a talking chimaera, and the boys had met many of them. Homunculi were supposed to be a myth, but they weren’t. It was that thought that kept her determined to get the Elrics home.

She couldn’t believe they had given up. The boys she ‘knew’ … they wouldn’t give up for anything. Edward had nearly died on several occasions due to that unyielding tenacity if the manga or anime was to be believed. True, she thought, ninety years without progress could probably be extremely damaging to the psyche. But still!

Kai sat up in her bed and sighed. The more she thought, the more restless she became. She had missed her usual Wednesday gymnastics practice that day, and she longed for the complete concentration it required. _Anything_ to get her mind off things she had no control over. Instead, she settled with rolling off the bed to pace the room anxiously.

 She needed to stop thinking about this. There were more important things that should be demanding her attention. Gymnastics, the internship, David, _college_ … she had so much she needed to be concentrating on, but alchemy had filled her brain to the point where it was practically the only thing she could think about. There just had to be something … _something_ that somebody had missed somewhere along the way.

Was this how Edward and Alphonse had felt as they were trying to figure out how to get their bodies back? She was going crazy, and it hadn’t even been a month!

Think. I have to _think_ , she told herself for the millionth time that day. What did she know? Okay, no. Narrow that down. What did she know about the way alchemy _worked_? In Amestris, that is. She would move on to this side of the Gate afterward.

The first part was easy. Comprehension, deconstruction, and reconstruction of the material – she had known that much for years. In order to do that, one would need to draw a transmutation circle in order to harness the energy needed for the alchemical process. The problem, of course, was that the origin of the energy differed between animes. In Brotherhood, the energy ran through the earth – the ‘Dragon’s Pulse’ as LanFan had called it – though Father had interrupted that flow in Amestris with the power of his Philosopher’s Stone for centuries. In the Original Anime, though, it was the death and destruction of _this_ world that allowed for the use of alchemy in _that_ one.

So which version was it?

She should really text Ed or Al to ask before she made a big mistake, but the elder Elric had already told her multiple times it wasn’t worth the effort and she _really_ didn’t want to bother him anymore than she already had. Even if she texted Al, he would still tell his brother, so that was out … at least for that night. Goddammit. Why couldn’t these things ever be _easy?_

Because if they were, the boys would already be back home, the voice of reason told her.

Kai sighed aloud. Right. Well then. It wasn’t like she needed them anyway. She could work this out herself – she wasn’t ranked third in her year for nothing, after all. It was just a question of logic, wasn’t it? She was good with logic.

“If it was the destruction in our world that powered alchemy, then that would mean the Gate opened both ways in order to allow the flow of energy,” she mused to the empty room. “Using that logic, Ed and Al should still be able to use alchemy. Not only that, but their alchemy should be even stronger here than it is there, as they would have direct access to the raw power. But they _can’t_ ,” she groaned, “and that’s the _problem_!”   
  
So it would make more sense that the Dragon’s Pulse was the power behind alchemy. This version of Earth probably didn’t have that energy running beneath the surface. That made sense, yeah?   
  
Who was she kidding? Nothing about this situation made sense.  
  
“But,” she then said, counteracting her own argument, “if it’s not like the Original Anime, then how the hell did they end up here in the first place?”  
  
Wait … no, scratch that. That was a dumb question. She already knew the Elrics’ actual history was a weird mixture of both the manga and the anime. Besides, Edward couldn’t use alchemy in _Conqueror of Shamballa_ without using Envy and his own blood, so that most likely counteracted the ‘Gate opening in both directions’ idea she’d had.  
  
But what had Envy and Edward’s blood have in common that allowed him to activate a transmutation circle?

“The Gate,” she exclaimed to the wall excitedly, “They’d both been through the Gate!”  
  
However, it wasn’t long before her hopes fell once more. Surely they had already tried that. It was such a simple answer, and the Elrics weren’t stupid. They wouldn’t have stayed ignorant to that theory for over ninety years, and if it had worked, they wouldn’t still be in this world.  
  
Besides, like Kathy had said earlier that day: things like that only ever worked in fan fiction.  
  
So that brought her back around to the Dragon’s Pulse theory. If that was indeed the power behind alchemy, it was most likely not exactly the same as it had been expressed in the manga – after all, the Elrics hadn’t been experts on the finer points of alchemical theory after being misled by their government for so many years – but it was the thing that made the most sense. From there, the answer was really quite simple, and Kai kicked herself for not seeing it sooner.

This world just didn’t have the power needed to perform alchemy, and with that conclusion Kai returned to her side of the room and collapsed back onto her bed.

So that was it then, she thought despondently as she stared blankly up at the ceiling. If they didn’t have the power, then there was nothing they could do. Even if she and Kathy had been able to come up with an idea that could theoretically get their friends home, it was nothing without the means to execute it. Looking back at it now, Kai realized that Edward wouldn’t have given up without good reason. Perhaps … perhaps she should have listened to him.

“Goddammit,” she said aloud. She allowed her left forearm to fall across her eyes, taking care not to press her glasses painfully into her face. If there was one thing she hated, it was being shot down before she had the chance to give it her all. Well, she had given this matter her all … even though it didn’t feel that way … and had still been shot down before she’d even gotten anywhere.

“Kaigirl?” Kathy’s voice asked hesitantly, “Are you okay?”

In her catatonic state, Kai hadn’t noticed her friend exit the bathroom. Struggling to remove the lump of disappointment lodging itself in her throat, she lifted her arm and looked over at her friend.

“Yeah,” she said, annoyed at the unevenness in the word. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” Like that was going to convince her best friend of almost thirteen years. Sure enough, Katherine raised a dark eyebrow behind her wide-rimmed hipster glasses.

“Really?”

Kai didn’t answer for a long while as she tried to keep her emotions in check. When she finally did, she managed to keep a level tone throughout most of the sentence.

“I just … Kath, I think we need to give up on this thing.” There. Her voice had only hitched once.

“But we’ve only just started!” the dark-skinned beauty exclaimed before casting a deadpan stare at her friend. “Who are you and what have you done with Kai?” She demanded, only half-jokingly.

“I’m serious, Kathy,” Kai said as she rolled onto her side to face her friend. Readjusting her glasses on her nose, she continued, “I think this is going to be a wasted effort.”

Kathy looked at her incredulously. “Girl, what are you on about?” she asked, “I call bullshit. I mean seriously, what the fuck? You’ve been so gung-ho about this for weeks now – you can’t just fucking change your mind. I thought you hated giving up!”

“I do!” the blonde girl insisted indignantly. “It’s just … whatever we do … it’s not going to work.”

“Tell me.”

And so Kai did. She even relayed her entire thought process to her best friend, who had moved to sit on the bed beside her. Drawing her legs up close to her body, she hugged them as she finished relaying the story. When she was done talking, she rested her chin atop her knees as she observed the girl sitting opposite her.

“Well,” the taller girl said finally, “your logic seems sound. So I mean, yeah, _maybe_ it’s pointless. But Kai – this entire thing is so outlandish. I’m actually still having difficulties believing it all,” she admitted. “And maybe it is impossible. Maybe we’re wasting our time. But I’m not backing out now, Kai. And I _know_ that you aren’t, either.”

“But –”

“But what? What excuse do we have not to try? Because it’s impossible? Because we gave up? Kai, in case you haven’t noticed, this entire situation is fucking impossible. It’s fucked up, big time. I mean, fictional characters that aren’t actually fictional? An alternate dimension being real? Jesus Christ, just talking about it makes me feel like some loony.”

At this, Kai cracked a smile. “Yeah,” she said. “You’re right, but –”

“– I usually am –”

“– _but_ I can’t spend all my time thinking about this because of a ‘maybe.’ You know? We’ve got college to think about, and the internship starts next week, and there’s gymnastics ...”

“Yeah.”

“Come on, Kath. You’re only here until the twentieth, and then I won’t see you for the rest of the summer. And for most of that, I’ll be busy at the Lab. Ed and Al aren’t going anywhere – let’s just enjoy ourselves for now.”

It pained her to say it, but it was the truth. As much as she wanted it to be, helping Ed and Al get home wasn’t a priority. They would still be around for the next few months. They would be around for the next year, the next decade – the next century even.  There was time to get them home.

The lights went out in the girls’ room not long after that. That wasn’t to say, of course, that they went to sleep. Rather, they continued to bounce ideas and theories off each other that got progressively more ridiculous as time wore on.

“What if,” Kai said, wheezing through badly muffled laughter, “what if that ship-thing from _Shamballa_ was actually a dimension-hopping spaceship that crash landed and ripped a hole through the fabric of the two universes?”

“Truth must have been fucking _pissed_ ,” Kathy said, trying to keep her own volume level down. “‘I am one I am all,” she mocked, “‘and I am – what the fucking hell was _that_? You in _comp_ etent humans!’”

Yeah. There was still time.


	13. Monday, July 8 (2013)

Kai didn’t know what she’d expected when she walked into the Livermore Lab on the morning of July eighth, but she knew that what she saw definitely wasn’t it.

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was incredible. It was more than incredible. It was awe-inspiring, unbelievable, futuristic, and … kind of scary. Following the lab techs through its mazelike halls, Kai could hardly take it all in. It was something straight out of a sci-fi movie, and she couldn’t believe it was real. She stared bug-eyed at the pipes and wires that ran along the walls, fascinated by the little colored lights that indicated things she would never understand.

After long talks with both her parents in the days leading up to the internship, it had finally been made clear what both parties hoped to get out of the opportunity. Both Robert and Marie were hoping that the experience at the lab would sway Kai towards the sciences, but the seventeen-year-old had made no promises. She had agreed to give it an open-minded try, but if she wasn’t convinced by the end of the summer then they would allow her to do what she wanted as far as school and careers.

It was certainly more leeway than she’d ever been given before, and the prospect scared her a little.

Still, it was pretty damn cool to walk through the halls and pretend she was the captain of a spaceship rushing her crew to do combat with invading hostile aliens. Her overactive imagination ran away with her, and she quickly became so absorbed into her daydream that she didn’t realize when the kid beside her tried to get her attention.

“What? Oh, sorry … I wasn’t listening …” she said guiltily as soon as she realized he was talking to her.

“I know,” he said, grinning. “It’s a bit much to take in, ain’t it?”

“Yeah,” she replied, unsure exactly of what she was supposed to say. Thinking back to the introductions that had taken place only fifteen minutes prior, she racked her brain for his name. Deciding she didn’t have too much to lose, she took a guess. “Raymond, right?”

“Yea-heah!” he exclaimed excitedly, holding his hand up for a high five. She jumped at his enthusiastic outburst. “You remembered! And you’re … Carmen, right? My mom works with your dad – she told me to look for you.”

“Well, you found me,” she told him, wondering why her father hadn’t said anything to her. “And it’s actually Kar _myn_ ,” she continued, stressing the second syllable before spelling it out for him. “But I prefer Kai.” She shrugged.

“What, really? It’s really spelled like that? That’s so _weird_.”

“I get that a lot,” Kai told him dryly. “My parents couldn’t decide on Carmen or Kathryn, and my dad is my dad, so he just meshed them together and my mom went along with it.”

“Well, Kai,” he said with a grin that still hadn’t faded, “I’m Ray. Nice to meet you.”

They fell silent as the techs began speaking again, but Kai already felt more comfortable knowing that she had a potential friend to pass the next few weeks with. Ray was of obvious Asian descent, with tanned skin and straight black hair that fell just short of his eyes. She guessed he was Japanese, but she didn’t want to make assumptions that would make her look like a fool later on. His eyes glimmered with excitement and she could already tell he was one of those guys with the infectious grins that made those around him want to smile as well. She got the feeling that he was extremely charismatic. He must have been one of those kids that made friends easily, she thought. He was kinda cute, but … ehn. David was definitely more attractive.

Turning her attention back toward the situation at hand, Kai only caught the tail end of what the techs were saying before her thoughts were once again interrupted – this time by an enthusiastic “Yes!” When she shot her new sorta-friend a quizzical glance, he delved eagerly into the explanation for his outburst.

“They filmed _Star Trek: Into Darkness_ at the National Ignition Facility!” he whispered passionately. “And now I’m actually gonna get to _see_ it – I’m so excited!”

Kai remembered going to see that movie with Kathy just after it came out. So the Livermore Lab didn’t just _look_ like something straight out of a sci-fi film, she mused, it _was_ straight out of a sci-fi film. As she watched Ray’s obvious excitement, the corner of her mouth quirked upwards. Around them, some of the other teens were muttering as well. Obviously, Ray wasn’t the only one excited by this turn of events.

The day wore on slowly, but not as slowly as it could have. Kai had to admit that the tour of the facilities had been interesting. She hadn’t been nearly as bored or as overwhelmed as she thought she might be. Raymond enjoyed sharing pointless science trivia to just about anyone who would listen, and considering Kai had stuck close to the one person she sort-of knew – this person being Ray – she had heard most of it. She hadn’t understood most of what he said, but his delivery was _so_ much more interesting than that of the scientists leading their group.

They were let go at three o’clock that afternoon after an explanation of what they should expect for the next few weeks. It didn’t sound too bad, Kai thought as the group disbanded and made their way toward the exit. To her relief, they each had been allowed to choose a partner to follow through the observations with. To her surprise, Ray had asked her to partner with him. Of course, it made sense as she thought back on it – he had already sort of known who she was, and they had been nearest each other for most of the tour.

Once they were out walking down the paths between the many buildings, Kai’s heart began to pound as she broke off from the rest of the group. Breathing in the mid-afternoon summer air, she pulled the piece of paper from her pocket that would allow her to enter her father’s workplace. She would be lying if she said she wasn’t anxious about what she was about to do. She _technically_ wasn’t allowed to go anywhere in the lab on her own, but Robert had apparently pulled some strings and so here she was. No adult had said anything to her when she peeled away from the group, so … that was good.

Then she heard running footsteps approaching her from behind. She felt a thrill of panic race up her spine. Shit, she thought, shitshitshitshit… Whipping around in shock, she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding when she saw it was just Ray. Taking a few deep breaths to steady herself, she tried to ignore the fact that he was probably-most-definitely laughing at her.

“Shut up,” she said, glaring up at him. “I thought you were some security person or something! You scared the shit outta me!”

“Sorry,” he apologized, at least somewhat sincerely. “You going to the CAMS?”

“Cam’s?”

“Sorry. The Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. Where our parents work.”

“Oh!” Kai exclaimed, feeling somewhat daft. “Yes, sorry. I just … uhm, yeah. Yes, that’s where I’m going.”

“Come on, then,” Ray said, taking the lead. “You’re about to see the coolest place in California.”

“Well, that wouldn’t be hard to accomplish,” Kai muttered, a small smile cracking her face. She never could resist cracking heat puns while on the west coast. 

* * *

It quickly became quite obvious that Raymond had done this dance multiple times before. He greeted all of the scientists they encountered by name, and many of them returned the nicety. He flashed his own piece of paper to all the right people and prompted her when she needed to do the same. Kai guessed, however, that the paper was only a formality for him. He could probably get in and out of this section of the Livermore labs without any questions asked.

The lanky teenager liked to talk, for which Kai was grateful. His chattering meant that she didn’t have to, and the less time she had to talk meant less of a chance for her to embarrass herself. She learned he was going to be a junior come the fall, he had lived in California his entire life, his last name was Clark, and he had two cats – Pikachu and Momo – both of whom he had named when he was ten.

“Here we are!” he announced grandly before opening the door. “After you.”

The CAMS was impressive, she had to give it that. Wires and metal and blinking lights were plentiful – it certainly looked science-y enough. She said as much, and Ray laughed.

“That was my first reaction when I first stepped in here a few years ago,” he admitted. “Come on, though here!”

Kai followed him through one door, and then another, and then down a short hallway before they reached the room he was looking for. He motioned for her to be quiet, and then cautiously opened the door they were standing in front of. Once they were inside, he closed it again just as carefully.

This wasn’t done silently, and so they attracted the attention of the men and women inside. Several of them waved to Ray before returning to their work, but two of them stopped what they were doing entirely and walked over to greet the two teens. Kai immediately recognized the man as her father, and so she came to the logical conclusion that the woman was Ray’s mother.

“Hey, you made it!” Robert Dallas said in greeting.

“Yeah,” Kai replied, sticking her hands in her back pockets, “barely. If it wasn’t for Ray, I would have gotten lost three times over… and probably gotten kicked out in the process.”

“So you met Raymond, then,” her father confirmed.

“Yep,” she confirmed needlessly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I … forgot,” Robert said sheepishly, rubbing the back of his neck. “Sorry about that, Kai. I’ve just had way too much to deal with recently.”

“They’re still on you about that thing with Dr. Russo?”

“Yeah. That and … other things. I swear, with every new discovery, this blasted element makes less and less sense. We’re supposed to _answer_ questions by doing research … not ask more!” He sighed. “Sorry, Kai.”

“He’s project manager now, since Dante’s disappearance,” Ray’s mother chimed in. “It stresses him out more than it should.”

“Right,” Robert said uncomfortably, “well. I still have an hour and a half before I can leave. Ray, you know the drill. Perhaps you can show Kai around? Just don’t distract anyone from their work.”

“Of course, Mr. Dallas,” Ray responded, and then the teens were left to their devices once more.

“Wasn’t that a bit too … easy?” Kai asked in a hushed voice a few minutes later as she followed her new acquaintance-maybe-friend through the facility. “I mean, this is some really high-tech hush-hush government stuff, isn’t it?”

“Eh,” was the only reply she received. “I’ve been coming and going here for years since my dad … uhm, yeah. Anyhow. As long as I don’t fuck anything up, they generally don’t care. And you’re the boss’s daughter, so that _probably_ grants you your own carte blanche.”

Kai shut up after that, as she could tell her question had made him a bit uncomfortable. Ray seemed to know what he was doing, whereas she certainly didn’t. As he led her through the twists and turns of the CAMS facility, Kai’s thoughts instead turned to the best friend that was probably bored out of her mind at Kai’s father’s apartment. Kathy had said that she was going to continue scouring the various FMA series in Kai’s absence in an attempt to find some answer they hadn’t found yet, but Kai knew that the taller girl wouldn’t last the entire day … especially after they had decided to give it a rest a week and a half ago.

Although, despite the fact they hadn’t spoken of Amestris since then, Kai hadn’t been able to stop thinking over what they _had_ found. That damn backwards transmutation circle haunted her mind, taunting her with fact she couldn’t figure out what it meant. She had even slipped during her beam routine a few days earlier due to her lack of concentration, resulting in a rather large bruise on the inside of her upper thigh.

She also hadn’t contacted either of the Elrics since that night twelve days ago, for which she felt extremely guilty. Though, she justified to herself, if they wanted to talk they could have just as easily have texted her.

“Aaand we’re here,” Ray announced suddenly, breaking her out of her reverie, not that she had any idea where ‘here’ was. If Ray had been speaking at all during their adventure through the halls and corridors, she hadn’t heard a word of it. She admitted as much, and her face burned with discomfort. Ray just rolled his eyes good-naturedly.

“Behind this door,” he started, probably for the second time, “is the only lump of stabilized Ununhexium – the only stabilized transuranium element – left in the world. It has taken years to amass enough of the atoms to create tangible stones, but they did it. One disappeared but, y’know, shit happens.”

“But isn’t that supposed to be impossible?” Kai asked as they stepped inside the room. “I mean, all the really heavy man-made elements are completely unstable.”

“ _Tech_ nically,” the Asian boy said, “yes. There’s this theory out there, though, that there’s a selection of superheavy, man-made elements that _are_ stable. They call it the ‘Island of Stability,’ and that’s what they’re really striving for with all this research. It’s been passed around that maybe Ununhexium – or rather, Livermorium – fits in this category, but … it’s theorized that they’re not supposed to hit the Island of Stability until like, the one-twenties or something, so it’s really, really weird. They’ve tested both elements one-fifteen and one-seventeen, and they don’t have the same properties, so it’s not like the Island of Stability is actually in the teens. It’s like Livermorium is some odd outsider that completely breaks the laws of physics …”

Kai paid attention to Ray’s ramblings, understanding the gist of what he was saying. Her gaze fixed upon the small red thing that rested within a high-tech containment unit that warned of radioactivity. It was tiny and uneven with a general radius that was no larger than the width of her pinky fingernail. It was hard to believe that such a thing had caused so much chaos and scientific upheaval in the lab, but there it was.

“They’re treating it as if it’s radioactive,” Ray said, tapping the symbol on the side of the unit, receiving warning glares from some of the scientists in the room for his actions. “But they’ve tested it time and time again and it’s _not_. At least, not radioactive in the way that anything else is radioactive.”

“It looks like a Philosopher’s Stone …” Kai mused aloud, her recent experiences still weighing upon her mind. If she had been on her own, she would surely have laughed at the irony. As it was, she stuck with a tight smile as she thought of her friends on the opposite coast. What a coincidence, she thought. And this surely was a coincidence, unlike her discovery of the Elrics’ ‘grandmother.’

“Wait, wait, wait – _Fullmetal Alchemist_ or _Harry Potter_?”

Kai looked up in shock, as she had almost forgotten Ray was still standing there beside her. “Uh-uhm … _Fullmetal Alchemist_ ,” she confirmed shakily.

“Dude! High-five – I love that series!” Kai returned the gesture hesitantly, unsure. She shouldn’t have worried.

“Y’know,” Ray continued, shaking the sting from his hand, “I thought the same thing when I first saw it. I mean- why not? Okay, well, I know why, but that bugged me throughout the entire show. The Philosopher’s Stone is a tangible item. They’re so caught up in the whole ‘human sacrifice’ thing that they never acknowledge the fact that the Stone is made up of atoms like everything else!”

Kai’s heart stuttered and she felt all the blood rush from her brain. “What,” she said as calmly as she could despite a heartbeat that was suddenly pulsing in ragtime, “did you just say?”

“Well, I mean, the Stone is a _stone_ , like, a _rock_ ,” Ray stammered, bewildered by the reaction his words had elicited from the girl. “Even if it is, like, made of human souls or whatever, you can’t _touch_ souls. So it would have to be made out of _something_ physical, right?”

Kai couldn’t think as her mind raced to connect as many dots as it could. “It has to be made out of something,” she said slowly, unconsciously switching to the present tense. “It has to be made of something that alchemists couldn’t create. It couldn’t be like, an alloy or a metal because then they could all just make Stones out of common, everyday elements and things would be shot to hell faster than Mustang could snap.”

“Kai?”

“Something they hadn’t discovered yet because they’re so far behind us … maybe not a Philosopher’s Stone, because those have the souls, but maybe a Red Stone … could it be?”

“Kai, you’re scaring me.”

Kai didn’t hear him. She was reeling, floundering in the face of the possibility that she had just been offered. There was no way that Ray could know just how _close_ he had been. It made sense! It made fucking sense!

The Stone was a Thing, she thought. It was a real, tangible Thing and what were all Things made of? Atoms. The Stone couldn’t be an alloy or a metal or anything because then an alchemist could just create it out of what he or she had. It had to be something that couldn’t be created with alchemy due to the Law of Natural Providence, so it had to be a pure element – a pure element that was man-made. A pure element that could only be man-made with twenty-first century technology and huge atom-smasher things like the one in the lab she was standing in.

The sanguine stone twinkled mockingly before her. It practically gleamed under the fluorescent lighting, and even through the probably-not-glass, Kai thought she could feel surges of power emanating from it – not radioactivity, _power_.

_“We’ve classified it as radioactive, but it doesn’t act like the rest of the radioactive elements. It’s a complete anomaly.”_

_“I swear, with every new discovery, this blasted element makes less and less sense.”_

_“… they’re not supposed to hit the Island of Stability until like, the one-twenties or something, so it’s really, really weird.”_

_“At least, not radioactive in the way that anything else is radioactive.”_

_“The Philosopher’s Stone is a tangible item. They’re so caught up about the whole ‘human sacrifice’ thing that they never acknowledge that the Stone is made of atoms like everything else!”_

“That might be it,” she muttered, her eyes still transfixed upon the red speck in the case. “That might just be _it_. This side of the Gate doesn’t have the intrinsic power – the Dragon’s Pulse – that Amestris does. So they didn’t have the power before, but this … this _is_ power. Or it could be, if I’m right. Holy _shit_ , I need to call Kathy.”

“Wait – Kai? Are you alright? Who’s Kathy? What’s happening? Why are you talking about these things as if they’re real? Kai!?”

Kai bit down on her lip, hard. She was suddenly faced with a decision. Did she tell Ray about what was going on? Or rather, was there any possible way to keep him in the dark? He _had_ led her to her epiphany. What should she do? She had told both Ed and Al she wouldn’t tell anyone else, and she’d only known Ray for a matter of hours, but the boy was already in over his head.

Raymond Clark was already a part of this fiasco, even if he didn’t know it yet.

Besides, she had no clue how to get out of this maze.

“Fuck it all,” she cursed under her breath before sending a quick prayer to a God she didn’t believe in. “Come on,” she said louder, grabbing Ray’s wrist as she whirled around towards the door. A second later, she let go of him and turned back, grabbing her phone out of her pocket as she did so. If she was going to prove to anyone that she wasn’t making stuff up, she needed hard evidence.

With shaky hands, she somehow managed to subtly snap a picture of the unassuming red mass without alerting any of the scientists. Ray watched on in disbelief as she shoved the phone back into her left pocket. She was aware that she had probably just broken a law or two or twelve, but for once, she couldn’t bring herself to care.

“What are you –?”

“Get me out of here, and I’ll explain then,” she said, cutting him off. He gazed down at her with an apprehensive look in his eye, but then relented.

“Okay.”

* * *

‘Brother,’ Alphonse scolded, ‘You need to stop messing with your leg – you know you’re just going to screw it up again.’

Startled, Edward looked up from trying to find the thing that had been rattling in his leg for the past few days. Meeting his younger brother’s stern gaze, he heaved a guilty sigh. Reluctantly, he removed his hand from among the metal and wires. He knew he wasn’t supposed to mess with the thing, but it was unlikely he would screw up anything major. After all, anything that could go wrong with his remaining prosthesis already had. After ninety years, what used to be fine automail was now little more than a hodgepodge assortment of both antiquated and modern technologies, wires, and metals.

Alphonse, satisfied his elder brother wasn’t going rip out something important, returned to the book he had been reading. While one who actually knew him might think he had ulterior motives for re-reading _Harry Potter À L'école des Sorciers_ for the umpteenth time, it was little more than an odd coincidence. Having nothing better to do that week, the sixteen-year-old had decided to reread the entire _Harry Potter_ series from start to finish in the assorted languages that comprised his collection. It would probably only take him three days to get through all seven books, but it would pass some of the time.

‘I’m so _bored_ ,’ his elder brother complained loudly as he stood from the couch he had been sitting on. Tapping his mechanical foot on the ground a couple times, Ed made a face when the thing that had been bothering him before still rattled.

‘What do you want me to do about it?’ Al asked, not looking up from his book.

The long-haired Elric didn’t reply. Instead, he thrust his metal leg out in a side kick. He tossed a few more blows to the empty space in the large finished basement, but ended the short sequence only a few moments later with a half-hearted punch. Although it was much cooler in the basement than it was upstairs, the muggy summer air still caused his unnaturally brown hair to stick to the sides of his face. Heaving a large sigh, the not-so-young man collapsed backwards onto the tile flooring.

He was bored. Summer was always boring when they posed as highschoolers, but this year even more so than the times in the past. He supposed he could work on his latest language project – Greek – but he didn’t really feel like doing so. It was a terrible conundrum – he was bored, but at the same time he didn’t want to do anything.

It was Kai’s fault. While Ed had tried his hardest to keep his hopes of returning home suppressed, her texts had caused him to think of things he hadn’t thought of in years … even decades. He hadn’t wanted to encourage her, but he couldn’t deny that the girl had been asking the right questions. The sudden constant reminders of the home he had refused to think of for so long had prompted many a late-night discussion between him and his brother, causing them to talk about things they had long ago agreed they wouldn’t speak of.

The Gate.  
Alchemy.  
Father.  
Mustang.  
Winry.  
_Amestris._

Edward had managed to quell his desire to return to Amestris for decades, but with the intrusion of Kai Dallas and Katherine Greene into his life, the longing had come rushing back with a vengeance. He didn’t need to ask Al if he felt the same – it was evident. They both jumped whenever either of their phones chimed with an incoming text message, followed by a mad scramble to open it.

They had told their father about Kai’s resolution to help them. The driving factor behind this decision had been the thought that if they did find a way home, it would be best not to spring it on the man at the last second. Van Hohenheim had expressed his doubts, but had done nothing to discourage either of his sons or their friends.

However, things were no longer looking so promising. Neither Ed nor Al had heard from Kai in over a week. After answering questions that had lead them to believe she might actually have an idea, the radio silence was abrupt and unexpected. Neither of the brothers knew what to think of it.

‘Maybe she thinks she’s onto something,’ Al had suggested after four days had gone by, ‘and wants to surprise us.’

Ed had only sighed. ‘Yeah,’ he had acknowledged cynically, ‘or maybe she’s given up and just doesn’t want to tell us.’

So when Al’s phone began chiming from where it lay beside him, both he and Edward froze. Looking over from his book, Alphonse checked the caller ID. As he picked it up and answered, Edward looked on curiously, wondering if it was who they had both hoped it would be.

‘It’s Kai,’ Al confirmed softly as he held the device to his ear. “Hello?”

‘Put her on speaker,’ Ed hissed, sitting up from his supine position on the basement floor.

Alphonse found it funny – Edward had no way of knowing this, but Kai had just asked him to do the same thing. As his heart beat in hopelessly hopeful anticipation, he pressed the button and raised the volume before sitting across from his brother on the floor. The phone was placed on the tile between them, and they waited for Kai to speak.

“This may seem … really sudden,” she started hesitantly, “and it’s really a ridiculous question to ask right out of the blue like this …” She was rambling. Her voice trembled in a way Al hadn’t heard it do so before, and a spark of hope leapt in his chest. “But,” she continued, “how quickly could you get to California?”

Alphonse exchanged a look of mixed feelings with his brother as his pulse skyrocketed. Beside him, Edward swallowed hard and took a deep breath.

“Why?” Al asked, fighting to keep his voice level.

“I think,” she said, “I think … I _think_ I may have found the missing piece.”

The deafening silence resounded throughout the basement. The missing piece, the walls seemed to echo, _the missing piece the missing piece the missing piece_. Edward wanted to say something – anything – but the lump that had lodged itself in his throat refused to let him speak.

“Does this mean …” Ed heard Al trail off the end of the question both of them wanted confirmed, but neither of them wanted denied.

“It means,” She told them a moment later, “We might be able to get you home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: The bit with the lab is made up, because there wasn’t enough actual info to go on. The science behind the ‘Island of Stability’ is true, but the bit about Livermorium being the Philosopher’s Stone is untrue.


	14. Wednesday, July 10 (2013)

Thus it was that Kai found herself standing in the San Francisco International Airport baggage claim area two days later, waiting for the Elrics. She shifted her weight between feet, wondering if she was in the right place or even had the right time. The sudden fear of having gotten the wrong time gripped her, and she forced herself to breathe as she pulled her phone out of her pocket and opened it to the texts she had received several hours earlier.

_Alan Cirle_  
Just got on the plane in Chicago.  
We’ll be there about 4:30 your time  
:)

Checking the time, she saw that it was 4:25 already. She took a deep breath and continued to shuffle as she tried to calm her nerves.

She had been a nervous wreck since Monday. Ever since theorizing that Livermorium might be the same atom that made up Red Stones, if not Philosophers’ Stones, she had found it impossible to sit – or stand – still. She and Kathy had been up late for the past two nights as they attempted to flesh out the theory they would present to the Elrics when they arrived. Kai had dragged them all the way across the country, for god’s sake. The girls had to have _some_ quality ideas to share with them at the very least.

The result of this was, of course; sleep deprivation, which did absolutely nothing to calm Kai’s nerves. Just this morning – around three o’clock – she had woken, gasping from a nightmare in which things went terribly wrong. She couldn’t remember just _what_ had gone wrong, but it had been on the worse side of terrible. She had woken Kathy up too, and then it had taken ages for both of them to get to sleep again. Kathy had applied her makeup that morning as per usual, so _she_ didn’t look any worse for wear, but the resulting dark circles were starkly prominent upon Kai’s un-made face. She would have asked Kathy to borrow some concealer, but all her friend’s shades were too dark for her own pale skin tone.

Speaking of said best friend, Kai smiled as she spotted the familiar dark face. She grinned as she watched the tall, elegant, dark-skinned girl wind her way through the crowds, pausing only to glare an implied ‘fuck you’ to one guy who stared a little too indiscreetly a little too long. Kai laughed as the scruffy, lanky guy flushed a bright red and immediately turned in the opposite direction.

“Jackass,” she heard Kathy mutter as soon as she came within earshot, quiet enough that Kai’s mother couldn’t hear her as she followed behind with her own beverage.

Kai grinned. “Don’t worry,” she whispered in reply, grabbing eagerly for the Starbucks that her friend held, “I’m pretty sure he’s not going to make _that_ mistake again.”

“Whatever,” Kathy grunted, rolling her eyes. “Here – caramel latte with extra foam, extra sugar, extra espresso, extra whatever else. I hate Starbucks. It’s complicated and fuckin’ expensive – oh, sorry Aunt Marie – why can’t there just be a Dunks out here?”

Kai took a cautious sip from the monstrosity that Kathy had ordered, and she swore she could feel the caffeine jolt her system. She generally disliked coffee, but the latte she held was definitely more milk than coffee. Taking a larger sip, she held it comfortably between her two hands. “What did you get?” she asked.

“Double espresso with cream, I think. Your mom ordered – I got confused just staring at the menu.”

They stood there in silence, both exhausted and weighed down by the immensity of the events looming on the horizon. After months of buildup, it seemed that things were finally about to come to a head. Kai had hoped for adventure all her life, but never had she imagined anything like what she had gone through in the past few weeks. She was just about ready for the entire ordeal to be over with, although she knew she would miss both Ed and Al when they were gone. She had been trying not to think too much about that.

Suddenly, her phone beep-beep-be-deep-ed its familiar text tone and Kai winced as she realized she had neglected to switch it to vibrate only. As Kathy chuckled, she pulled it out of her pocket with her left hand. Holding her beverage in her right, she turned the sound off before looking to see who the text was from.

“It’s Ed,” she said, clumsily unlocking her phone with her one hand. “They must have landed.”

_Eric Cirle_  
Touchdown!  
We’ll be there shortly.

_Kai Dallas_  
We’re waiting at the baggage  
claim :)

After sending her reply, Kai began to fidget once more. Faced with the impending arrival of the two boys she could call friends, but wasn’t _real_ close with, she grew more and more unsure of herself. What if she was wrong about the whole Livermorium thing? She was _probably_ wrong about the whole Livermorium thing. Why had she dragged them all the way across the country on a hunch?

Why had they _come_ all the way across the country for a hunch? For a person they had only met a couple months prior? For someone they weren’t even the best of friends with?

She had no clue, and that made her uncomfortable.

“Hey, is that them?” Kathy asked suddenly a few minutes later, “I think it is!”

Kai jumped to her tiptoes, but some time still passed before she could finally spot the three false brunets. She cursed her height silently, wishing – not for the first time – that she could be only a couple inches taller.

“Hey, over here!” the taller girl called, catching the attention of the trio of men. Kai felt her cheeks burn as they garnered some unwanted attention as well, though Kathy paid no mind.

The Elric family made their way over to the trio of women, and several long seconds were spent looking awkwardly at one another. Suddenly, Kai had no clue what to say. What did one say in a situation like this? ‘Hello?’ ‘Hey, how’s it going?’ ‘Soo, about this element …’ ?

“How was your flight?” she finally asked as she looked into ice-blue eyes.

“It was fine,” Edward replied, uncrossing the arms that had been folded across his body. He scratched at his head with one finger. “Though I can’t say it’ll be something I’ll miss if …”

He trailed off, and the awkward silence fell once again. Taking a deep breath, Kai had prepared herself to say something else – anything else, though she didn’t know what – when Kathy interrupted.

“You’re gonna be eating your words,” the dark-skinned beauty said confidently, “when you’re stuck on those god-awful trains again. You’re both gonna be thinking, ‘damn, I sure do miss those twenty-first century comforts,’ and everyone’s gonna think you’re a couple of loonies who came back from the dead, raving about the future and alternate universes and the two crazies … that’s us, by the way.” She motioned between herself and Kai, as if it weren’t obvious enough already.

“Well,” Alphonse chuckled, unable to contain his mirth, “when you put it that way …”

And then everyone was laughing, effectively breaking the ice between the four teens. Although they had known each other for almost two months now, it had still only been two months. They were friends, definitely, but it was still a tentative friendship that generated awkward silences more often than not. When they laughed together like this, though, it was all too easy to forget that the boys weren’t simply ‘Ethan’ and ‘Alan.’

Marie and Hohenheim watched the four teens with amusement.

“This lead, with the Livermorium … do you think it could actually get them back across?” The taller blond man asked the woman beside him, observing the way his sons interacted with the two girls.

“To tell you the truth,” Marie said, brushing a stray auburn lock away from her eyes, “I don’t really know much about it myself, but Kai explained her theory to all of us in detail. Both Robert and Ray backed her up … after, of course, they realized they weren’t dreaming and that Kai wasn’t crazy.”

“Ray?”

“He’s a new friend of Kai’s, the son of one of my husband’s co-workers. As far as I understand it, he was with Kai when she found the Stone. We couldn’t exactly keep it a secret from him, but we did swear him to secrecy.” Marie expected her coworker to be upset with the fact that the secret had been leaked to yet another person, but instead the man just smiled fondly.

“If it gets them home,” he said, watching the quartet, “then it won’t matter much, will it?”

“No,” Marie agreed, “I guess not.”

* * *

It was a cramped drive to the hotel that the Elrics would be staying at for what were hopefully to be their last few days on this side of the Gate. Breaking the law only slightly, the four teens crammed into the backseat built for three. Kai found herself squashed tightly between Kathy and Alphonse. Edward was on the other side of his brother. While it wasn’t uncomfortable, she was all too aware of the heat from the unfamiliar limbs pressed against her own. As subtly as she could, she shifted closer to Kathy in an attempt to alleviate some of the sensation.

“You’re smaller,” she had been told by her best friend, “you get the middle seat.”

While she had never been bothered by her small stature, Kai sometimes hated the way she would be strong-armed into doing things others didn’t want to do. Just because she was short didn’t mean she _wanted_ to get the thing out of the nasty corner or become the pancake in the middle seat.

Alphonse, on the other hand, simply had the terrible luck of being the younger sibling. Edward had claimed the window seat, pulling the seniority card even after ninety years, and Al had reluctantly allowed him to get away with it. Thus it was that Kai was quite illegally sharing the center seatbelt with him, as her mother had refused to break the law any further by not having them strapped in. It wasn’t _bad_ , she supposed, just … different. And, okay, mildly awkward.

But it was a shared plight, and she could tell that the boy beside her was no more comfortable with the situation than she was. Kathy and Edward passed the time arguing about completely irrelevant things. Their disagreements had been amusing at first, but after twenty minutes, Kai and Alphonse agreed that it was time to shut them up.

Needless to say, everyone in that car was extremely relieved when they pulled up in front of the Hampton Inn.

The boys had a duffle bag each, but not much besides that. Kai didn’t know whether it was a testament to their confidence in getting home or in their belief they wouldn’t need to stay long after finding yet another dead end. As they waited for Hohenheim to check in at the desk, she decided not to overthink it. Whatever happened happened, she realized as they walked down the halls to the Elrics’ suite, and there was little she could do to change things now even if she tried.

The six of them were now standing inside the moderately-sized ‘living room’ of the suite. If either side had been hostile, the situation could easily have been called a stand-off as the Amestrians and Americans stood facing each other. Kai didn’t know where to start, or what to say. They had gotten this far … now what?

It was Edward that inadvertently answered the question as he plopped back onto one of the couches in the room. “So,” he began as he arched his back and stretched his arms above his head, “What’s this grand theory of yours that called us all the way out here?” He sighed as his joints popped, and his arms fell back to rest by his sides.

“Brother!” Alphonse exclaimed quietly, “we only just got here!”

“Yeah, so?” the long-haired brunet asked somewhat testily. Letting out a deep sigh that puffed his cheeks, he rocked forward so that his feet laid firm against the ground and his elbows took support on his knees. The elder brother fixed Kai with his ice-blue stare, and the girl swallowed nervously at the intensity behind his falsely-colored eyes. It felt so different in real life compared to the animation, especially when she was on the receiving end of that look! So unnerved was she that she nearly missed his next words.

“You wouldn’t have called us out here if you thought there was only a chance that whatever it is you’re thinking might work. Whatever it is, you think it could get us back pretty quickly. Right?”

Ignoring the sound of Alphonse scolding his brother for “scaring her in such a manner,” Kai dropped her eyes from Ed’s for a moment before meeting his gaze once more. Beside her, Kathy shifted just a little bit and the reminder that her strong, brash, outspoken, and protective best friend was there steeled her resolve. She knew what she was doing. She had stayed up so late for the past couple nights in order to file her thoughts in such a way that everything would make sense. She was prepared. She could do this.

“I- I think so, yes.” Inwardly, she cursed herself for tripping over her first words before turning to her mother. “Can we go back to the apartment? I know it’ll be really cramped there, but I want Dad’s help in explaining this.” As an afterthought, she added, “and Ray’s.”

“Wait, Ray–?”

Her mother’s response cut off Edward’s confusion. “Are you sure, sweetie? That would be nine people in that apartment …”

“Mom, please! Besides, you _know_ we’ll need Dad’s help!”

“That’s true,” the older woman assented after a moment’s pause. “Okay. Let me just call your father to warn him.”

Marie stepped out into the hallway, and there was once again silence among those remaining. Kai ran through the many theories that she and Kathy had come up with over the past couple days, desperate to make sure she hadn’t forgotten any details. Across the room, Edward and Alphonse conversed in hushed murmurs. Every now and then their voices would rise, but she was unable to make out what they were saying. She was almost certain they were speaking in a language that was not English.

“I’ll be right back,” she vaguely heard Kathy tell her before disappearing into what she guessed to be the bathroom.

And then it was only her.

She had to get this right. If she screwed up, knowing she had failed would practically kill her. It was then that she realized she might not even _know_ if she had succeeded or not – if the brothers made it to the Gate but then ran into trouble there, she would never know what happened. As she pushed her glasses further up onto the bridge of her nose, she was suddenly faced with the true extent of the daunting task before her. Before now, it had only been theoretical. Now, however, with Edward and Alphonse sitting before her with rejuvenated hope in their expressions, everything was real.

A heavy hand on her shoulder interrupted her thoughts, causing her to jump.

“Are you okay, Karmyn?”

She turned to look into yet another pair of falsely blue eyes, but these eyes looked at her with an air of wisdom and knowledge that she had never seen in anyone else she had ever met. They spoke of centuries and the rise and fall of one empire after another. Haunted by the things they had seen over the years, by both the man’s doing and the doing of others, those very same eyes met hers in a vision of concern.  

Then she blinked, and all that remained was the visage of an average middle-aged man. Kai quirked her mouth as she realized her folly and a huff of air left her in a substitute for wry laughter. As she pulled her hair out of her face, her mouth settled into a softer smile.

“Yeah,” she breathed, feeling as if she could trust this man. “It’s just … it’s too much, you know? I should be worrying about the fact that my boyfriend and I are on a break, not about alternate universes and so-called fictional characters.” Here, an actual chuckle escaped her lips. “Though I have to admit,” she continued, “it’s been a great distraction.”

Both the man and girl observed the two teenaged boys arguing on the couch, speaking in a language that Kai could now confirm was not English. It sounded like German, but …

“That’s Amestrian, isn’t it?” She spoke softly, folding her arms across her body. It may have been phrased as a question, but there was no doubt behind her words. Hohenheim nodded in answer as he removed his hand from her shoulder.

“Yes, it is – you have a good ear. They’ve always been determined not to forget the language they grew up with.”

“I really hope this works out,” Kai admitted, looking down as she shuffled her feet. “I mean, I think it will, but … I’m not a scientist, or an alchemist. All I’ve had to work with is logic and a second-hand, fictionalized account of their lives. The chances of me being right are slim-to-none and … I’m just afraid I’m going to let you all down.”

Hohenheim looked down at her out of the corner of his eye before taking a large breath. “Karmyn,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something that I’ve never told either my sons in all the years we’ve been here.”

This caught her attention, and she peered up at him over the rims of her glasses. Something he hadn’t told Ed or Al? Why was he telling _her_ then? He didn’t even really know her! Her mind turned over itself, but she managed to key in to his next words.

He sighed heavily. “This isn’t the first time I have been on this side of the Gate,” he admitted, and he looked down to check her reaction before continuing. “I was younger, and I was trying to find a way to return myself to mortality. We ended up here, and when I began to age, I thought we had done it. But when that body died … I ended up back in what is now Amestris as if nothing had happened.”

“So then … but … why … why are you still here? Why haven’t you aged?”

The older man smiled sadly, his eyes still fixed on the two boys across the room. “I don’t know,” he admitted, “and that’s why I’ve never told them. I didn’t want to get their hopes up, because I have no clue how to get back again. I’ve spent millennia thinking about it, and I think it’s probably similar to the ‘doppelgänger’ theory that your people came up with.”

“You mean like in the 2003 anime?”

He nodded. “So when my double died, I got sent back. But this time … we didn’t end up in our doubles, for some reason I cannot determine. And therefore, our bodies are still governed by Amestrian time.”

Kai turned to face him head-on. Biting her bottom lip in confusion, she ran her left hand through her hair so that it draped over one shoulder. “Why are you telling me this?” she finally asked.

“Because,” Hohenheim said, meeting her naturally blue gaze with his own false one, “you’ve succeeded in getting them closer to home in a couple months than I have in ninety years. Even if it doesn’t work out, that’s still more than enough to be proud of. Remember that.”

She swallowed hard as she looked away from the Elrics’ father, tears stinging her eyes. I will, she wanted to say, I know. But the words didn’t come out as she watched Alphonse laugh at something his brother said. She couldn’t believe that she had just received more validation of her efforts from this man she hardly knew than from anyone else she had talked to. Blinking away the liquid in her eyes before it rolled down her cheeks, she smiled genuinely.

“Who were you?” she asked.

“Pardon?”

“Who were you, you know, the last time. Who was your double?”

He chuckled. “I think you could figure it out,” he told her.

She thought for a minute. He may have been named after the guy with the ridiculous name, but she suspected that wasn’t who he had been. In fact, perhaps he had renamed _himself_ after the guy with the name. He had probably still called himself an alchemist … and then she knew. She laughed, drawing attention from the other occupants of the room, including Kathy, whom had been eavesdropping on the latter half of their conversation from just around the corner.

“Nicolas Flamel,” she declared under her breath, “I should have known.”

* * *

Kai had thought her father’s apartment was cramped with only the five of them living there. She quickly re-evaluated her definition of ‘cramped’ when, by some distortion of the laws of physics, nine people managed to fit into the apartment’s tiny living room area. The three adults had claimed the worn couch for themselves, leaving the five teens – Ray had since joined them – to find seats elsewhere in the room. Despite her protests, Kai found herself forced into the armchair of honor, as Kathy had insisted that she was the one running the show. Beside her, Kathy perched on the armchair’s arm. Edward and Alphonse had been given permission to sit on the coffee table that had been dragged out, and Ray hung awkwardly by the television.

With Christopher bouncing excitedly on her lap, Kai couldn’t help but think that the gathering felt rather like a meeting of a secret underground society or rebel group. In a way, she reasoned as her brother giggled happily, it _was_ such a gathering. They were meeting in secret to discuss a topic that the rest of the world knew nothing about. Despite the anxiety building in her chest, she was forced to hide a smile behind Christopher’s mop of blond hair.

“So,” Kathy said, finally breaking the silence that no one else was willing to break, “I bet you’re wondering why I called you all here today …”

This garnered a smile and a chuckle from the room’s occupants. Even Ray, who still looked extremely uncomfortable in this room full of people he didn’t know, grinned at Kathy’s successful attempt at humor. Actually, Kai noticed, his gaze had flicked often to her best friend. I tried to warn him, she thought with bemused ruefulness.

“Well,” the elegant dark-skinned teen amended, “It wasn’t really _me_ , who called you here, but you get what I’m saying. Anyhow. We – that is, Kai and I – think we’ve found something.”

Edward rolled his eyes, which were now sans contacts. “Obviously,” he said, “or else we wouldn’t be here! Can you just get to the point?”

Kathy looked to Kai. The shorter girl stood from her seat, displacing a protesting three-year-old as she did so. In that instant, she wished she had been able to tell David about everything that had happened. She wanted him standing there by her side, so that she could hold his hand for support without looking weak and scared in front of these people who were depending on her. She knew that as soon as she and he were back together – because they _would_ be, there was no doubt – she would tell him everything.

But that wouldn’t help her _now_.

Instead, she reached behind her back and grabbed her own right hand. She winced as she squeezed just a little too hard – she really needed to cut her fingernails. Biting her bottom lip, she began what was to be the most important conversation of her seventeen years of life.

“I think I’ve found a Philosopher’s Stone.”

_That_ certainly got the alchemists’ attention.

“A Philosopher’s Stone? But … how?” Al asked, covering for his brother who – for once – appeared to be speechless. On the couch, none of the adults said anything, deciding to let their children talk things out themselves.

“W– well,” Kai continued, “I guess it’s not really a _Philosopher’s_ Stone as such. No one’s died! It’s more like a Red Stone …”

“But that’s still–”

The elder Elric never got to his fourth word, as Kathy interrupted him.

“I swear to God – and I’m not even Christian – if you say ‘impossible,’ I am going to hit you,” she snapped. “If it was _that_ impossible, we wouldn’t _be_ here right now! Now just shut up and listen to Kai. She knows what she’s talking about, okay? Okay.”

If she were being honest, Kai thought her friend had been a bit harsh on Edward. That was not to say, however, that she was ungrateful for the help. She took another breath, centering herself once more.

“No, you’re right,” she said in an effort to pacify the chastised Edward, “it _is_ impossible. At least, impossible with alchemy. Alchemy is impossible on this side of the Gate. _This_ Earth doesn’t have the Dragon’s Pulse running through the land like yours does. With nothing to power the transmutation, it’s impossible.”

Did she just say ‘impossible’ in every single one of those sentences? Oops.

“What this world _does_ have, though, is almost a century’s worth of more advanced technology. We have science that isn’t alchemy, but still has to do with the elements and atoms and the periodic table and whatnot,” she explained. “So really, if you’re gonna get home, you’re wasting your time by looking to alchemy.”

By this point, she had unclasped her hands. They now waved in front of her as she delved further into the topic she had become so passionate about in the past month. She stumbled over her words in her haste to get them across, but that no longer discouraged her.

“Al,” she said with a decisiveness that was more Kathy than her, “what is every single thing in this world – and your world – made of? Scientifically, that is. What are the building blocks of everything?”

“Atoms?” he responded, albeit slowly and rather questioningly.

“Right. And the Stone is a _thing_ , so therefore …”

“So therefore it has to be made of atoms,” Edward said carefully as realization lit up his eyes, “but it has to be made of atoms that haven’t been discovered in Amestris!”

“The Law of Natural Providence,” Alphonse stated, looking at his brother intently. “It’s impossible to make a Stone with alchemy because there’s no other element similar to it! Why didn’t we think of this before?”

Kathy coughed purposefully, and both boys immediately quieted. Not for the first time, Kai wished she could have the same effect on people as her friend had.

“Right, so you can’t create the atom that the Philosopher’s Stone is made of using alchemy, unless you do some horrifically horrendous stuff that I don’t even think actually creates the atom itself, but rather does something entirely different to get the same effect, like a prepaid credit card or something. I’m not going to get into that, sorry. But anyway. _You_ can’t do it, but _we_ can, with our big atom-smasher thingies like the one my dad works with.”

“Which is what you’ve discovered,” Edward concluded. “You’ve found the element that the Stone is made of.”

“Yes,” Kai confirmed, sighing in relief. “Element 116 on the periodic table – Livermorium.”

“And this would provide the power needed to complete a transmutation?”

“I believe so, yes,” she confirmed once again, shifting her weight uncomfortably.

“It’s not much,” the elder brother mused, rubbing his jawline with his fingers, “but it’s definitely something – more than we’ve ever had to work with before. Al?”

“I think it’s worth a shot,” Alphonse confirmed, “but … how are we going to get it?”

“Actually.” Heads turned to look at Ray who – until now – hadn’t spoken a word. “We already have a plan.”

“Do you, now?” Kai’s father finally asked, adding the first parental input since the discussion had started, “By all means, let’s hear it!”


	15. Friday, July 12 (2013)

_When Rome’s in ruins, we are the lions_   
_Free of the Coliseums._   
_In poison places, we are anti-venom._   
_We’re the beginning of the end._

* * *

Plan ‘Ay,’ Al had to admit, rivaled some of those that he and his brother had come up with during their overly numerous years of shenanigans. While both he and Edward had been wary at first of the Japanese-American teenager, it soon became quite obvious that they could trust Kai’s newest friend. Although he had freaked out a bit upon meeting the Amestrian family, he had managed to compose himself pretty quickly thereafter.

“The most straightforward way to do this,” Raymond had said, “would be to have Mr. Dallas take the stone and sneak it out of the lab. However, we need to keep as much suspicion off of him as possible. After all, getting you two home isn’t _really_ a good enough reason for him to lose his job … especially as – if this fails – you’re gonna need an inside source if you wanna try again.”

“The Livermorium project was done in cooperation with the Joint … Something-or-other,” Kai added, stumbling over the name of the facility.

“The Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, in Dubna, Russia,” Robert supplied.

“That was it. I forget if it was me or Kai that came up with this idea, but … uhm … we kind of need you to pose as a Russian scientist,” Ray told Hohenheim.

Both Al and his brother had listened in rapt fascination as Kai and Ray laid out their plan with some input from Kathy every now and then. The blonde girl had long since reclaimed her position in the armchair with her brother, obviously uncomfortable with standing up in front of so many people, but it did nothing to invalidate the things she had to say. If anything, the quiet, serious atmosphere added more weight to her words than there would have been if she had still been pacing.

The Plan, dubbed ‘Plan Ay’ after both ‘Kai’ and ‘Ray,’ was supposed to go something like this:

Kai’s father was to call the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research, asking for them to send a scientist out for a second opinion on the fragment of Livermorium. If they said they would, that was when _their_ father, Hohenheim, was supposed to hack various websites and databases in order to integrate himself into the system as a scientist from Dubna. He would arrive at the Lawrence Livermore laboratory, and Robert Dallas would pretend as if they didn’t already know each other.

Then, as the ‘scientist from Dubna’ looked over the little red chunk of Livermorium, Van Hohenheim would check to see if it was actually a Stone. If it wasn’t, then all hope would be lost and he would leave empty-handed. If it was, then he would palm the thing and put a dummy in its place. It wouldn’t be a perfect replica, but it would do the job until he could get out of there with the real Stone.

When the lab workers finally found the false Livermorium, they would check the security cameras. They would then be searching for a Russian scientist that matched Hohenheim’s description. By that point, though, all records of the supposed ‘scientist’ would already be wiped from the databanks. They would be searching for a ghost.

“And so,” Ray concluded, “When they look to Mr. Dallas, he can say with a clean conscience that he called the Institute in Dubna, and that they said they’d send a scientist. He’ll say that the man had all his credentials, and didn’t seem suspicious. The evidence that is there will support his claims, but at the same time, they won’t be able to pin anything on Russia, either, because they’ll say they agreed to send a guy, but hadn’t yet, and Mr. Hohenheim won’t be in any of their databases.”

That discussion had taken place two days ago.

Alphonse and Edward were currently left waiting anxiously in their hotel room as Plan Ay unfolded in the lab across the town. So far, everything had gone off without a hitch. Robert Dallas had called Dubna as soon as the few kinks in the original plan had been worked out. Dubna had agreed they would send a man within the next few days, and as of this very moment, their father was currently inside the Lawrence Livermore labs impersonating that scientist.

If there was one thing the two brothers agreed on at the moment, it was that waiting _sucked_.

It was a fact that they had already known, but there was a large difference between waiting resignedly and waiting in anticipation. Edward hadn’t sat down in almost two hours – Alphonse was surprised that he hadn’t worn a rut in the hotel room’s carpet yet. That wasn’t to say, of course, that Al wasn’t antsy himself. Although he kept himself seated on the room’s couch, he was always moving _something_. His leg bounced. His fingers tapped.

He was setting himself up for disappointment.

That didn’t stop him from glancing continually at the two innocuous rectangles that lay flat upon the glass-top coffee table. One entirely black, one framed in white, both with vibrate turned on and the volume up one hundred percent. From the other side of the room, a second pair of golden eyes couldn’t stop from doing the same thing.

‘She said she’d call,’ the pacing teenager bemoaned, yanking his flesh fingers through the strands of hair that had once been bangs. ‘They should know by now, right? Why hasn’t she called?’

‘Kai and Raymond have their internship thing until two o’clock,’ Al reminded his brother. ‘We still have at least half an hour before they’ll know for certain.’

Edward huffed and left his pre-programmed route to flop down onto the couch beside his brother. Al watched him bemusedly as he pushed the hair that had fallen out of the hastily tied ponytail out of his face. The blond was beginning to show at the roots again, the younger Elric noticed. If this thing fell through, they would have to find another pack of dye soon.

‘I just want to know,’ Edward said as he dropped his hands and sighed. ‘Even if it’s a false lead, I can’t stand this waiting.’

Alphonse agreed wholeheartedly with his brother. They were so _close_. Images and memories of the people they hadn’t seen in over ninety years flooded to the forefront of his mind, where they hadn’t been in at least eighty years. Mustang, Hawkeye, Gracia, Izumi, Pinako … _Winry_. How much time had it been for them? Had they already considered them dead, mourned, and moved on?

It was a thought that had crossed his mind only occasionally throughout the decades spent on this side of the Gate. In these recent weeks, however, it was one that he had found himself asking almost every single day. Would they get back only to find they had lost their little niche in the country they called their own?

What if they belonged more to this side of the Gate, where they had lived six times longer than they had lived in Amestris?

These were the things he thought about late at night when his insomnia got particularly bad, and the more he thought about them, the fewer answers he had. Now, for the first time in over ninety years, he had the chance to settle some of them. But …

‘They don’t know what I look like,’ he stated suddenly, startling his older brother. Edward looked at him confusedly for a few moments, but then realization dawned on his face.

‘That’s right,’ his brother mused, ‘I had completely forgotten – they’ve never seen you outside of that old armor. Man, the pranks we could pull before they found out … that bastard would never even see it coming!’

‘That _would_ be the first thing you thought of,’ Al replied dryly. ‘I can’t believe –’

A knock at the door cut him off mid-sentence, and he and Edward exchanged a bewildered look. Had they been expecting anyone? The mystery knocker knocked again, and they scrambled off the couch.

‘It can’t be Dad,’ Edward said, checking the time. ‘It’s still too early.’

Alphonse walked over to the door, looking out the peephole to see who it was. He nearly laughed when he recognized the familiar, slightly-pissed-off expression of the girl that had terrified him upon their first meeting. On the other hand, he was really sort of confused as to why she was standing in their hotel, in front of their room.

“Hi, Kathy,” he greeted the taller girl as he opened the door, “what are you doing here?”

Kathy stared at him for a few moments before her expression relaxed into something akin to relief. “Oh, thank fucking God. I thought I had the wrong room for a minute there!”

“Uhm, yeah … we weren’t really expecting anyone.”

“What, _Kathy_?” Edward asked as he walked up behind his brother, just as confused as Al.

“No, it’s Karla, the other tall Anglo-Indian girl you know,” she snapped, “what do you _think?_ ”

“Look, why don’t you come in?” Alphonse asked before she and Edward could start fighting … again. “You’re obviously here for a reason, so there isn’t really any point to standing out in the hallway …”

She smiled, revealing perfectly aligned teeth. “Thanks, Al. I promise I’ll explain.”

Once she stepped over the threshold, Al closed the door behind her. It wasn’t long until they were settled back in the lounge area, this time with one of the armchairs pulled up to offer an extra spot for their impromptu visitor. In all reality, Alphonse didn’t really mind her dropping in on them, and he knew his brother didn’t harbor any harsh feelings either.

“Let me first say that I _hate_ taxi drivers. Jackass couldn’t stop leering. I thought he was gonna kill us, he wasn’t watching the road!” Kathy raved. “But anyhow. Long story short, that apartment is boring as fuck. I mean, Christopher and Aunt Marie are great, but a person can only put up with a three-year-old for so long, y’know? I don’t know how Kai does it.” She shook her head affectionately, and then continued with “besides, this anticipation is _killing_ me.”

“I dunno,” Edward commented, “you look pretty alive to me …”

“That’s why I said ‘killing,’ not ‘has killed,’ dumbass. I’m not dead _yet,_ ” she retorted. “Hey, is that the communal phone pool?”

“Hmn? Oh, yeah,” Alphonse confirmed, slightly embarrassed. “We didn’t want to miss the call,” he admitted. “Brother and I actually have a bet going as to who she’s going to contact first.”

“Oh really?” Kathy asked, “how much?”

“Ten bucks,” Edward told her from his seat in the armchair.

The young woman tilted her head as if considering something. Finally, she smirked a feral grin that made both boys nervous as she drew her own phone from her back pocket. She fiddled with the volume controls for a second, and then tossed the Android device so that it landed beside the two iPhones.

“I’m in.”

“You think she’s going to call you first?” Al asked, hiding the fact that he knew without a doubt that both his and his brother’s pockets would be ten dollars lighter by the end of the afternoon.

“No shit,” she replied in a tone that expressed that there had never been any doubt.

Yep, both brothers thought at the same time, we’re done.

The rest of the dreaded half-hour passed more rapidly than they had anticipated. With Kathy there to distract them, they all found themselves wishing she had thought to drop by earlier that afternoon. They relayed to her stories about Amestris that had never made it into the series, as well as some of their misadventures from this side of the Gate. They had protested, at first, when Kathy had picked her phone up off the table to record video of the three of them and their stories, but had quickly assented when she told them that it was for Kai after they were gone.

“And then,” Al wheezed, doubled over with laughter, “Brother’s face …”

_TELL ME SOMETHING THAT YOU WANT TO HEEAARRR~ SOMETHING THAT WILL LIGHT THOSE EEAARS~_

All three teenagers froze as the music blasted through the small room.

_SICK OF ALL THE INSINCEEERRRE~_

Kathy’s videocam paused as the ‘incoming call’ message lit up her phone.

_I’M GONNA GIVE AALLLL MY SECRETS AWAYYY~_

“It’s Kai,” she whispered unnecessarily.

_THIS TIIIIMMEE~ DON’T NEED ANOTHER PERFECT LIII–_

She answered it.

Al felt his heart speed up and his breath catch in his throat. This was it. This was it this was it this was it. Across from him, He watched Edward lean forward in his chair, desperate to hear the answer before it was even spoken. Fists were clenched across the board in a futile attempt to disguise the emotions running rampant.

“Kai,” Kathy said, betraying nothing that might have been revealed to her in the previous few seconds, “Kai, breathe. It’s okay. I’m actually with them right now; do you want me to put you on speaker?”

The answer must have been ‘yes,’ because the dark-skinned girl pressed a button on the screen and set the large rectangular device where all three of them could see it. Al could hear heavy breathing from the other end of the line, as well as muffled voices in the background.

“All right, you’re good,” Kathy told her best friend.

“Really, Okay. Ohmygod,” the familiar voice all but screeched, “Ohmygod ohmygod ohmyGOD!! We DID IT!!!”

“Then …” Edward prodded, letting the question hang. No one needed to hear it completed in order to understand what he was asking.

“YES!” Kai practically screamed across the speaker, “It’s real! It’s true! Oh, my God. I’m crying right now, guys, you have no idea. I’m holding it in my hand and it’s so warm and I can _feel_ the power. It’s like warm electricity, you know?” She gasped for breath. “I just – I was _right!_ I was _right_ and you’re going home and god _dammit_ I am an emotional wreck right now.”

“She really is,” a masculine voice – Ray – said. “It’s kind of scary, actually.”

Kai wasn’t the only one in tears, either. Alphonse didn’t even try to hide the tears that trailed down his face as his emotions flew through the roof. Edward pretended to keep a straight face at first, but his brother knew that when he buried his face in both his hands, he too had failed in the endeavor. Kathy simply crowed with joy, ecstatic that all the hours she and her best friend had put into trying to find a way to get the Elrics back hadn’t been for naught.

A rough clank sounded from the speaker on the table between them as the phone on the other end of the line changed hands. The next voice that spoke was deeper, easily identifiable as Ed and Al’s father.

“We’re heading back to the Dallas apartment,” he explained. “Katherine is with you, so have her drive you over. We have the Stone, but we need to figure out how to get the alchemy to work. As of now, time is of the essence.”

“Got it,” Kathy replied before either of the boys could, though she didn’t mention they would be taking a taxi. “We’ll be over as soon as possible.”

The phone was handed back to Kai, and she gushed a few minutes longer before hanging up, allowing the teens back at the hotel to get their things together. After the line went dead, Kathy deftly swept her phone up and returned it to the back pocket of her lime green skinny jeans. Looking between the two Amestrians, she rolled her eyes when she realized that neither had any intention of moving any time soon.

“Come on boys,” she said, standing. “You heard the man! Up, up, up! Big things to see, big things to do, and _so_ little time to see or do them in. This is what you’ve been waiting for! Don’t just sit there like a pair of fucking vegetables – I didn’t invest my time in this so that you would become comatose!”

 _That_ got them moving.

‘Should we bring our things?’ Al asked as he and his brother stood inside the room they shared. ‘I mean … is it asking for too much if we hope we can get the alchemy to work today?’

Edward considered this for a minute, surveying the room. ‘Well, it’s not like we’ve forgotten how to do it,’ he said. ‘I still remember everything … even the circle for human transmutation.’ The last couple words came out in little more than a whisper, but he carried on as he stepped forward to grab his phone charger from beside his bed. ‘I think, if the alchemy does work, then it’ll work if we do the same thing I did when Ling and I were inside Gluttony.’

‘So we should bring everything, then,’ Alphonse clarified.

‘Yes,’ his brother confirmed before letting out a victorious whoop. ‘Ye-hayah! We’re going home!’

* * *

 _Tonight, the foxes hunt the hounds._  
It’s all over now. Before it has begun …  
We’ve already won.

* * *

The time between getting back from the laboratory and the arrival of Ed, Al, and Kathy was tense. Kai’s heart ran at what felt like a million beats per minute as she paced the length of the apartment, and she fought to breathe as steadily as possible. The tiny, innocuous sanguine pebble sat in a small saucer upon the coffee table, taunting her with its nearness and all that it stood for.

She wanted to touch it again.

She wanted to hold it, to feel the tingle of power that ran through her fingers and flowed through her veins. The sensation had been better than the greatest euphoria she had ever known, headier than that alcohol she had partaken in a couple times at David’s insistence. It had calmed her and excited her at the same time, inundating her with a mix of feelings she had never experienced before.

When Hohenheim had plucked it out of her fingers the warmth retreated, leaving her feeling cold and empty inside. It had scared her, how much the tiny thing had affected her body. The power was a drug – more so than she had ever expected it to be. Now, with her head clear, she understood Zolf Kimblee to an extent that she had never wanted to. To have that power coursing through your body for years … it would be enough to drive anyone crazy. Like any drug, she felt that the body would eventually become dependent.

She never wanted to touch it again.

Still, it beckoned her.

Ray sat on the couch, observing it with awe. Every now and then, he prodded at it hesitantly with a gloved finger. After Kai’s reaction to the bare-handed contact, the adults had decided that it would be a good idea to avoid touching it to skin. Thus it was that everyone in the small apartment wore thin latex gloves, just in case. To everyone’s relief, they appeared to work.

Marie held Christopher close, much to the three-year-old’s consternation. He had been told multiple times that he was absolutely not supposed to touch the tiny red object under any circumstance, and he had agreed not to, but his mother was not taking any chances. The effect she had been informed it had on her daughter had scared her to wit’s end – there was no way she was letting her son anywhere near the thing.

There was very little talking done in that time. The adults spoke together in low murmurs that neither Kai nor Ray could hear, much less make out. Ray muttered to himself about science and alchemy and impossibilities, and Kai paced anxiously, recovering from her power trip and attempting to get her thoughts back in order. She continued to breathe deeply, refusing to break down in yet another panic attack. Everything else had disappeared from her life – the only thing that existed in her thoughts was the here and now.

The opening of the apartment door startled them all, and Kai didn’t even try to restrain herself from running to greet her best friend. The three of them were barely inside the door before she was standing in front of them.

“Kaigirl!” Kathy exclaimed, “We did it!”

“Yeah,” Kai laughed as some of the tension left her chest. A second later, she was swept into tanned arms and lifted from the floor in jubilation. Grinning widely, she returned her best friend’s hug just as fiercely. Over Kathy’s shoulder, she accidentally locked eyes with Alphonse, and she felt her face heat in mild embarrassment at their display of exuberance. A moment later, he grinned and she looked away.

When Kathy finally put her down, groaning about her weight, she took a deep breath to steady herself once more.

“Just … whatever you do, don’t touch the Stone without gloves on,” she told her best friend gravely, holding up one of her own latex-covered hands for inspection.

“What? Why?” Kathy asked, extremely confused. “After what you said, I wanted –”

“Just don’t,” Kai interrupted her. “It’s not a good idea. I –” she shuddered violently. “It’s like a drug. You won’t want to let go, and when you do … please, just trust me on this one.”

At this, Ed shot an inquiring glace at his father, who had come up behind Kai. “But that doesn’t make sense,” he said. “I held a couple of them back home. I could feel the power, yeah, but it wasn’t that severe …”

“The people on this side have never been exposed to alchemical energy,” Hohenheim said, holding out a pair of gloves that Kathy took reluctantly. “It affects them more severely than it does us, due to the fact it’s so foreign to them.”

“Then why did you let me have it,” Kai asked, whirling around to face the older man, “if you knew what was going to happen?”

“I was not aware of the consequences at the time,” the Elrics’ father admitted. “It was only when I saw how dilated your pupils had become that I realized the potential ramifications. Please forgive me.”

She sighed. “Yeah, it’s okay. I feel better now,” she lied. While she did physically feel better, the sudden revelation of just _how much_ the Stone’s power had affected her left her scared and breathless. She was so glad that once the Elrics got back home, she would never have to meddle in such things again. She would return to Somerville, finish her senior year with Kathy and David, and then go on to college and the uneventful rest of her life.

 

“Right. So, uhm, can we see it?” Al asked, jerking her from her thoughts.

 

 “What? Oh, yeah. This way,” she said needlessly.

 

Ray stood as they all entered the room, moving over to make room for Ed and Al. The sanguine stone remained upon its saucer, glinting in the overhead lights. Kai heard Edward gasp beside her as he came into full view of the tiny Stone.

“It’s been forever,” Al muttered to his brother. “I’m afraid that it’s just gonna disappear.”

 

“It does take me back,” Ed replied as he approached the coffee table. “And the best part?” he asked cheekily, turning back to see his brother and the others standing behind him. “It didn’t take _any_ lives! _None_ at all! That’s just amazing.”

Kai suddenly thought back to Dr. Russo, the scientist that had mysteriously disappeared and had yet to be recovered. She met her father’s gaze from across the way, and she knew he was thinking of the exact same thing. There was a minute shake of the head, and it was tacitly understood that the incident wouldn’t be spoken of. Raymond watched the subtle exchange between father and daughter, and he too understood what they hadn’t said.

There was no reason to burst the Elrics’ bubble.

Kai watched with apprehension as Ed crouched to take the thing into his hands. She let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding as there seemed to be no adverse reaction. If anything, the seventeen-year-old’s posture relaxed as his body was reacquainted with the sensation it had long since been deprived of. The entire room watched on eagerly as the two boys observed the object that had once caused them so much strife.

“It feels like home,” Edward remarked to his brother, who was crouched beside him. Curious, Kai crept forward carefully to see what was going on. Kathy and Ray followed shortly after, and it wasn’t long before Ed and Al were flanked by the friends they had made on this side of the Gate. Behind them, the adults stood and watched their children with a pride that no other parents’ pride could compare to. Christopher, feeling left out, squirmed out of his mother’s arms in her distraction.

“KaiKai!” he exclaimed, toddling toward his sister.

“Christopher, come back!” Marie commanded, but she was ignored as the boy was taken into Kai’s lap.

“It’s alright, Mom. I’ve got him,” the teenager said, clasping her brother tightly against her body. “You won’t touch the red rock, will you Christopher?” The little boy shook his head in an emphatic ‘no.’ Kai smiled as blond hair flopped over little eyes. He’s gonna need a haircut soon, she thought.

“Here, Al,” Edward said in the meantime, dropping the Stone into his brother’s hands. Al caught it, and made a surprised noise as it made contact with his skin. Kai’s attention was pulled away from her brother and back to the situation at hand.

“Are you okay?” she asked, concerned that it would affect him in the same way it had her.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” the younger Elric said, shaking his head abruptly. “The power rush just surprised me, that’s all. Warm electricity, isn’t that what you said?”

“It didn’t feel too much of a rush,” Ed remarked in confusion.

 Alphonse shrugged, dropping the gem back onto the saucer with a clatter.

“Come on, what are you _waiting_ for?” Kathy finally demanded. “You were so anxious to get over here … isn’t the point to see if you can actually _do_ alchemy? I mean, the Stone is all well and good, but it’s not gonna get you back there itself.”

“We’re getting there, hang on,” Edward snapped back.

“Kai?” Al asked, “Could we have a piece of paper and a pencil?”

“Oh! Right,” she realized. However, before she could get up, her father was already standing behind her with the requested materials.

“Thanks, Mr. Dallas,” Ed said gratefully as he took them into his own hands. Laying the paper out on the table, he took the pencil into his left hand and sketched a simple transmutation circle keyed toward wood. Kai’s heart rate increased once more, but this time it was more in excitement than anxiety. Around her, she felt the rest of the room’s occupants doing the same.

“Whoa, you actually draw perfect circles?” Ray asked in astonishment from beside Kathy, “I always wondered.”

“Yeah,” Alphonse replied eagerly, “they can be off by a couple degrees, but there’s only a leeway of about two degrees either way at any given point.” He paused. “Well, I say two degrees, but for a circle of this size it’s only about one. The tolerance varies depending on the size of the circle,” he explained.

“That’s _so_ cool,” Ray marveled.

“In our world, it’s just science,” Edward dismissed as he put the finishing touches on the first serious transmutation circle he had drawn in decades. Taking a deep breath, he picked the Stone from the saucer and placed it in the middle of the design. “Now, you should probably lean back a little bit – there’s no saying what this could do.”

Everyone gazed upon the alchemist with excitement and anticipation, and the room fell dead silent. The clap that followed resounded throughout the room with a heavy finality, and then those same hands landed on the paper transmutation circle. Breaths were drawn, and …

Nothing.

Edward repeated the gesture – clapping louder this time – and slammed his hands down onto the table. Again, nothing happened save for the clatter of the saucer bouncing off the wood. The action was repeated time and time again in desperation, but there was no effect except for the reddening of the alchemist’s palms.

“Dammit!” he cursed, shoving the paper toward his brother. “You were always better at this than I was – you try!”

Kai could see the doubt in Al’s face, but he still performed the short ritual in order to appease his brother. Everyone let out the breaths they had been holding – this time, they all expected exactly what they got: absolutely nothing.

“What the hell happened?” Edward demanded, “We have the power, the circle is correct … what isn’t right?”

“Brother –” Alphonse started in an attempt to pacify his sibling, but Kathy cut him off before he could say anything more.

“Reverse the circle.”

“What?”

“I said, reverse the circle. Draw it backwards,” she clarified.

“What good would _that_ do?” Ed asked incredulously, “If it doesn’t work the right way, there’s no way in _hell_ that drawing it _wrong_ would –”

“It’s like the one you drew on the shower door,” Kathy said eagerly to Kai, ignoring the indignant rant of the golden-eyed alchemist sitting on the other side of the table. “You know, the lopsided one! From one side, the point was on the left …”

“But from the other, it was on the right,” Kai finished, “like a mirror image!”

“What the _hell_ are you saying?” Ed demanded, having completely forgotten the presence of three-year-old Christopher.

“You explain it,” Kai told her best friend. “After all, you were the one who _finally_ figured it out.”

“Alright,” Kathy started, “so. A couple days after we arrived in California, Kai came to me excited about some breakthrough she made in your case. I thought she was crazy when she drew an absolutely terrible transmutation circle on the shower door in purple marker … the ‘draw-a-transmutation-circle’ thing only ever works in the fan fiction … anyway,” she coughed. “We discovered that from one side of the door, the pointy end was on the left, but on the other side, the pointy end was on the right. We knew that one side was here and the other side was Amestris, but we didn’t know what to make of it until now.”

“And what does it mean?” Al asked, though it was obvious he was already putting the puzzle pieces together in his head.

“The Gate is, well … a gate,” she explained, “a door. So imagine if there was a person placed in front of a door, and the only thing they knew was that if they pulled the door, it would open. Before you ask, I don’t know why the fu-udge this person knows so little, but he does. But anyway. One day, this person is placed on the other side of the door. All he knows is that if he pulls the door, it will open. So he pulls and pulls … but it doesn’t open. It doesn’t even _occur_ to him that he would have to _push_ the door instead.”

“So we _pulled_ the Gate open in order to get here,” Ed began to connect, “and we pull it in order to perform any sort of alchemy over in Amestris … but we’re on the other side of that door now … hey! Are you saying that we’re dumb?”

“What?” Kathy scoffed, “Of course not …”

“Please, that’s not the point,” Kai interrupted before the yelling began.

“You’re suggesting that by reversing the transmutation circle – by mirroring it – we would be pushing at the door instead? And that the transmutation might work?” Al asked, continuing the diffusion of the situation.

“I think so,” Kai told him, “but I’m not entirely sure. It seems a little simplistic, but ...” she shrugged. “It’s worth a shot, right?”

“Right,” Edward replied. “So you’re saying to just mirror the circle across the y-axis? Not across the x-axis as well?”

“Well, if you flipped it across the x-axis _and_ the y-axis, you’d basically just be rotating the thing and you’d be back where you started. So yeah, just the y-axis,” Kathy confirmed.

The elder Elric didn’t rise to the bait this time, instead flipping the piece of paper over in order to trace over what he had drawn on the front. When he finished, he had a properly reversed transmutation circle lying in front of him. As Edward replaced the small red gem, Kai crossed her fingers underneath the table in a childish gesture of hope, knowing that whether they were crossed or uncrossed would do nothing to affect the outcome. Kathy glanced over at her and smiled, crossing her own slender fingers.

They were in this together, and they would be until the end.

“ _Think_ about pushing rather than pulling as well,” Ray whispered, “It might not work, even if it is reversed, if you’re still trying to move the energy in the wrong way.”

The air within the apartment grew still once more as time drowned itself in molasses. Breathing became a forgotten necessity once again, to both American and Amestrian, teenager and adult. The hum of the lights faded to nothingness and even the fly that had been buzzing around the room stilled its wings.

Edward’s clap was thunder in the silence, his harsh exhalation a gale-force wind. His hands descended toward the paper, the mounting suspense the calm before the storm. The slam of his palms upon the coffee table caused the earthquake that shook everyone’s world, and then there was the _lightning_.

Ethereal crimson sparks shot from the circle upon the paper as the graphite lines flamed with the most vibrant red visible to the human eye. The color lit the faces of the five teens that encircled the reaction, and the adults looked on with the same amount of wonder as that of the three-year-old. The otherworldly electricity snapped through the room, causing hairs to stand on end and chills to run down spines. It was wonderful and terrible, supernatural and yet so _real_ that it was impossible to deny.

“KaiKai,” the three year old whispered excitedly, breaking the silence as he pulled on his sister’s shirt. “Look! Fairy lights!”

“Yeah,” the astounded teenager agreed absent-mindedly, still enthralled by the spectacle in front of her, “fairy lights.”

* * *

_We are wild, we are like young volcanoes._   
_We are wild, Americana, exotica._   
_Do you wanna feel a little beautiful baby?_   
_Yeah!_


End file.
